


Cry Havoc

by Sorrel



Series: Dogs of War [1]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: F/M, Friendship/Love, Male-Female Friendship, Slow Burn, assholes in love, violence is the best way to say i care
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-28
Updated: 2018-01-09
Packaged: 2018-05-03 20:26:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 73,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5305667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sorrel/pseuds/Sorrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a saying in the wasteland, so old MacCready doesn't even rightly remember when he first heard it.  <i>There's only two kinda of people in this world,</i> the saying goes, <i>the quick and the dead.</i>  And MacCready's not dead, so he must be quick: quick enough to run, quick enough to shoot, and quick enough to know a good deal when he sees it.  The boss, though, the boss is something else.  The kind to thrive, maybe.  The kind who kicks free of all of the filth and muck and rises to the top; the kind who'll drag all of her people up with her, even if it means she has to kill every last sonofabitch in her way.</p><p>And maybe Mac didn't really know what he was getting himself into, when he let some woman with a smile and a shotgun talk him into taking a contract.  But damned if he can say he ever regrets coming along for the ride.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A note on travel times: as best I can tell, the game seems to have compressed a lot of the distances around Boston. I, on the other hand, have probably gone overboard in the opposite direction. As far as I'm concerned, Sole and MacCready move at the speed of plot: they always take exactly as long as they need to to get from Point A to Point B. *shrug*

_Blood and destruction shall be so in use_  
_And dreadful objects so familiar_  
_That mothers shall but smile when they behold_  
_Their infants quarter'd with the hands of war;_  
_All pity choked with custom of fell deeds:_  
_And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge,_  
_With Ate by his side come hot from hell,_  
_Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice_  
_Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war._

-Julius Caesar, Act III

###### 

By the time she comes strolling into the Third Rail to interrupt his trainwreck of a life, she's already made a name for herself, not that he knows who she is at first. Even here in Goodneighbor they've heard that the Minutemen are back, that they took the wreck of the old Castle and they've started broadcasting again. Mac's even heard tell of a new General in their ranks, though he never got a name or description. He's caught snatches when he's in and out of some of the shops - Daisy likes to swap to Radio Freedom when Travis starts rambling too long - but he hasn't paid 'em much mind. Good to know they came back after Quincy, but- Not really something he wants to think too much about, all things considered. And history aside, there's not much call to go getting himself involved with a bunch of do-gooders, anyway. If there's one thing he's learned over the years, it's that there's no caps in being a nice guy.

Unfortunately.

Mac notices her when she comes into the room, of course - he didn't survive this long by being oblivious to his surroundings, especially not when they involve well-armed strangers - but she doesn't interrupt, just gives him a nod and goes to the back wall to wait, lighting a cigarette and watching him mouth off to Winlock through the resulting haze of smoke.

"You can play the tough guy all you want. But if we hear you're still operating inside Gunner territory, all bets are off. You got that?"

Fuck him so hard with a rusty chainsaw. "You finished?"

"Yeah… we're finished. Come on, Barnes."

He keeps a wary eye on their exit, not entirely sure that they're not going to turn and pull on him at the last minute until they're gone. Then, and only then, does he let out a long, slow breath and turn to the stranger who came in after them.

 _Hard case_ , he thinks immediately, but there's plenty of those down here, and at least she's not threatening to fill him with lead, unlike his previous visitors. Her clothes have seen better days, but she's got money in her gear: the leather armor's clean, of good quality, and stained dark to blend in against her patched leather duster. She's got a pistol strapped to her left thigh and a sawed-off shotgun on her right, and she's wearing a pair of damn nice shooting gloves that makes him willing to bet that she left something bigger with Ham up the stairs. Strapped like that, with her long red hair shaved away at the sides raider-style, she's pretty much gotta be a merc - but damned if he's ever met a merc that could afford a Pip-boy like that. Out of a vault, maybe?

If so, she's been out for a long fucking time. There's an old plasma burn on her forehead, a mess of white splotches on her cheek that look like cryo-treated rad burns, and there's a fresh-looking tangle of pinkish scars over her mouth and down her chin that looks like something got to her with claws. It's hard to eyeball her build with her loose clothes, but her cheeks have the hollow look of the perennially underfed, so she's been living lean for a while. She's no junkie, at least - her fingers are perfectly steady on the cigarette, no jet jitters or psycho twitch - but there's something a little wild about her, a coiled kind of danger in the seemingly casual way she leans against the wall. He wonders if her fuckoff dark shades are there to hide a bad case of crazy eyes; there's not much call to wear them down in this smoky shithole otherwise. She's gotta be half blind.

 _You can't afford crazy, MacCready,_ he tells himself, but the hollow feeling in his belly tells him he can't really afford to turn down work, either. And only someone crazy take on someone who's feuding with the Gunners. If she's willing to pick up a gun with a target on his back, he's not sure he can tell her no.

 _Duncan,_ he tells himself, and takes a deep breath. _You're doing this for Duncan._

"Look, lady," he says, because he always mouths off when he's nervous and the fixed, blank way the lenses of her shades are fixed on him is making him pretty fucking nervous. "If you're preaching about the Atom, or looking for a friend, you've got the wrong guy. If you need a hired gun… then maybe we can talk."

She doesn't answer at first, just turns to stub out her cigarette out against the countertop, and he sees that her right ear's down to just a stump, either chewed off or cut with a bad blade. She lets out a last stream of smoke and folds her hands over her belt, confidence writ large in every lean line of her.

"What makes you think I'm here for business?" Her voice is unexpectedly low and smooth, startling in comparison to her scarred-up face. "Maybe I got lost on the way to bathroom."

"I'm an optimist," he says flatly. And she's a comedian; just his fucking luck. "Either you're here to pay me to shoot somebody, in which case it's two-fifty caps upfront, no negotiation - or it's out the hall, third door on your left, can't miss it."

If she’s put off by his bad attitude, she doesn’t much show it. “Two-fifty’s a little rich for my blood,” she says. _Tap-tap-tap_ , go her fingers on her belt buckle. "And I only need you for a single job. Think I could talk you down?”

“Am I talking to myself? I said no negotiation.”

Fuck, he wishes he could read her better. The slow, lazy grin that curls her scarred mouth doesn't do much to counter his sense of unease, either. “Everything's up for negotiation," she says, and that'd be a bad sign even if her hands weren't so conspicuously close to her holsters. "But let me tell you the job, first, and we'll see if you're willing to take it."

"I don't do anything with animals, kids, or birthday clowns," he says promptly, a little bit because the way she's eyeing him is starting to nerve him out a little but mostly because he doesn't know how to keep his smart mouth shut. He doesn’t expect the burst of laughter that cracks out of her - real rusty, like she doesn’t laugh much. Her hand drops away from her holster and she pushes her shades up onto the top of her head with an impatient swipe, revealing sharp green eyes that are crinkled up in the corners from mirth.

 _Huh,_ he thinks, staring at her. _She doesn't look crazy at all._

"You," she says, her voice warm with good humor. "I like you. I think we're gonna get along just fine, MacCready."

"Yeah?" he says, a little disoriented by her sudden change of tone but game. He could really use the caps, and the Gunners haven't exactly made it easy for him to get a paying gig. "You could at least give me your name, y'know. If we're going to be working together, and all."

She straightens away from the wall, closes the distance between them in a lazy saunter. Sticks out one gloved hand. "Call me Sole," she invites. "It's good to meet you. Say, how'd you feel about breaking into a vault?"

###### 

"I was wrong," he tells her, a few hours later. Another bullet pings off the canister above his head, and he scowls and leans out from cover, gets off another shot. "You're absolutely crazy."

"I said we were breaking into a vault, I don't see what the problem is." Sole eases the tip of her rifle - a beautifully modded semi-auto that he'd be admiring under any other circumstances - over the edge of their cover, braces it against her shoulder, and then leans up, sights, and fires in one smooth motion. There's a gurgling yelp followed by a thud, and the rate of fire from the other end of the room cuts in half. "You were the one who was more concerned about getting caps up front than information."

"Shouldn’t have let you talk me down on the payment,” he growls. There’s four other goons on the ground next to them, and another two across the railway. Mac’s good in a firefight, but damn. “You can’t spend loot if you die first. If I'd known you were breaking into a vault full of Triggermen, I would have asked for double.”

She just grins at him, and he realizes that her whole body is loose and relaxed, no sign of stress on her at all. She seemed more tense buying him a drink at the Rail, and while admittedly there's always a chance someone's going to try and put a blade in you down there, the odds are a lot better than a whole bunch of trigger-happy mobsters trying to put a bullet in them down _here_ , so who the hell knows what her deal is.

"Yeah, but then you'd miss out on all this fun," she chirps, and sets her rifle down so she can pull her shotgun out of its holster. "Look, it's simple. Our target is down in that vault. Those welcoming fellows are between us and our target. We eliminate the obstacles, retrieve our target, and get the hell out. Done and done."

"Simple, huh?" he says, and entirely in spite of himself, he starts to smile. She's crazier than a radroach on Jet, but hell if he doesn't like her style. "Well, when you put it that way, Boss, how can I refuse?"

She grins back at him. "That's what I like to hear."

"You want some covering fire if you're going to wave that thing around?"

"If you'd be so kind," she says, and cocks the shotgun. "Count of three?"

"One, two, _three,"_ he says, and swings his rifle back up, starts firing as fast as he can. Sole vaults over their cover and works her way down the railway to the steps, moving fast and keeping low, ducking and weaving to avoid gunfire. Mac manages to get a bullet in the mobster's thigh right before the bastard could get a bead on her, which makes him swing his gun back around towards Mac and he has to duck again. But that's okay, because a moment later he hears the _crack_ of her shotgun, loud and echoing in the train station, followed by the muffled wet noise of a knife sliding into something vital. There’s the _thump_ of a body dropped carelessly to pavement, and then a moment later she sounds the all-clear whistle and he cautiously pokes his head back out of cover.

"You good?" she calls over, and he takes quick stock of his extremities and then gives her a thumbs-up. "Good job. Go over the bodies, take everything you can carry, and then meet me over in the office. We move in five."

"Got it." He picks up her rifle, whistles low and cocks an interrogative eyebrow. "Catch?"

"Yeah, throw it over," she says, and puts away her shotgun so her hands are free. He steps to the edge of the platform and tosses it in a gentle arc, and she snatches it out of the air and gives him a quick wink before she holsters it and turns away. "Keep an eye out for any spare ammo," she adds, already rifling through one of the Triggerman's pockets. "I don't exactly think this was their entire security by any means. The last thing I want to do is run out of bullets when we're too far in to go back."

"I'm on it, Boss," he says, and turns away. Not so fast that he doesn't catch the small, pleased grin she gives him from the other platform, like he did something right. It leaves him with a pleasant warmth in his belly as he bends to his task, despite his best intentions to ignore it.

_Sucker,_ he tells himself. But there's worse things to be.

###### 

Sole's 'target is Diamond City's premier synthetic detective. You could honestly knock him over with a feather.

"Not that I don't appreciate the reverse damsel-in-distress scenario here, but what the hell are you doing here?" Valentine asks. "I didn't know anyone even knew I was down here, much less would want to come looking."

"I got a tip that you're the only one in the Commonwealth who can handle an... unusual missing persons case," Sole says. She's tense again, though you couldn't tell it from the easy tone of her voice; it's only the tight line of her back that gives it away. "Let's just call it a favor for a favor."

"Some favor," Valentine says, his eyebrows raised. "But sure, not exactly going to look a gift horse in the mouth right about now. Think you can get us out of here?"

"We cleared away most of the men on our way down, though I'm sure he's got more where those came from," she says. "We can go back the way we came, but I'm sure someone's found the bodies by now and called for reinforcements. You got a gun?"

"They weren’t real keen on leaving me armed,” Valentine says, looking torn between amused and annoyed. "But what I do have is a faster way out. I don't think Malone was exactly planning to let me go this time, so he took me down through the back entrance. If the guards are following you-"

"-then they're less likely to be clustered around the back door," Sole finishes. "I like it. After you, Mr. Valentine."

"You're saving my life, I think you can call me Nick," Valentine says dryly, and heads out the door. Behind him, Mac gives her a speaking look.

"What?"

"You could have told me we were on a rescue mission for one of the most famous residents of Diamond City," he points out. "I'm just saying, you're not real great with sharing information."

"And you're not real great about asking," she says, but not accusatory, just making a point. "We get out of here alive, we can discuss it further. That work for you?"

"Sure thing, Boss," he says. She grabs his shoulder and gives it a quick squeeze, then follows Valentine out the door.

The detective has managed to arm himself in the intervening moments, with a pistol that looks a lot like the one ol' Dino had on him before Sole splattered his brains against the storage room window with that fuckin' beautiful shot. "You kids ready to go?"

"Watch it with the 'kid' shit," Sole says mildly, before Mac has a chance to do more than bristle. She slings up her rifle to rest it over her shoulder. "But yeah. After you, detective."

"Try not to shoot me in the back," Valentine advises, and cranes his head to show the empty place where his throat should be. "I've got enough holes in me as it is."

"I think you'll be satisfied with our performance," Sole says easily, and grins that shark grin that Mac's already gotten used to seeing in the middle of a firefight. "Lead the way, detective. We'll cover your six."

###### 

When the shooting's done, Valentine heads for the surface and Sole sets to scavenging the corpses with the same businesslike thoroughness she's displayed all day. Mac does the same, settling into the comfortable silence that rides between them, only to be surprised a few minutes later when he hears a laugh from the other side of the room. He looks up to see her with Skinny Malone's hat perched on top of her head.

"So, how's it look?"

Mac only raises an eyebrow. "I thought you already had a hat."

She balls up the little cloth cap she wears to keep the light out of her eyes when she's shooting and shoves it in her pocket. "Yeah, but this is _fancy._ "

"I dunno, Boss, you sure black is your color?"

She tilts it to a rakish angle. "Black is _everyone's_ color."

He grabs another pocketful of caps and gives her a considering look. It's not that it doesn't look good on her, it's just- "It'll fall off the second you start shooting."

"Fuck, you're right," she sighs, and pulls it off, dropping it carelessly back onto the body. "You're a practical man, MacCready. I like that about you." And then, before he has a chance to figure out what to say in response, "You about done? Only I figure the good detective isn't going to wait forever."

Mac does a quick pat-down of the final goon, liberates a sweet-looking boot knife, and then stands. "Yep. Ready to head out when you are."

"Thank Christ, I was starting to think we'd be stuck down here forever." She falls into step with him easy as anything, their boot heels ringing in perfect sync on the metal walkway out of the vault. "Man was not made to live underground. It's unnatural."

"Ah, I don't know," Mac says, with a quick look up at the roof of the cavern above them. He's lived a lot of places in the last ten years, but Little Lamplight will always be home. "I don't feel quite right without some stone over my head, myself."

She shoots him a quick sideways look. "You grew up in a vault?"

"Something like that." He clears his throat. "What about you? Raised in the Commonwealth?"

Her quick flash of a smile looks more bitter than anything. "Something like that. Been away for a while, though. Feels like a whole new world now. Still getting used to it."

"I hear that. Came up from the Capital Wasteland myself, and it's a bit different than I remember. Politics, mostly. Still, you know what I think?"

He doesn’t know why he’s telling her this, why he even opened his mouth, but she just glances over at him with nothing but mild interest. "What's that?"

"People are the same all over the da- darn place. The factions might change, the landmarks are a little different, but everything else? Nah."

"You figure?"

"Yeah. You live by the gun, you die by the gun, or you just die. Nothing ever really changes.”

She doesn’t turn to look at him, but out of the corner of his eye he can see the muscle in her jaw flex. “You know what, MacCready? I couldn’t agree more.”

###### 

Aboveground, Valentine is waiting for them, leaning against a wall and smoking a cigarette. Mac looks at it a little longingly (man, what does a robot even need with nicotine, anyway?) but promises himself that he’ll just buy a pack off one of the scavvers when he gets back into town. Between Sole’s caps and the looting, he’s about as flush as he’s been in almost three months, so he can afford it.

“Ah, that Commonwealth sky," Valentine says. "Never thought anything so naturally ominous could look so inviting."

"Doesn't take much to get to a point where anything looks better than the hole you're in," Sole says. There's an ironic twist to her mouth. "Glad you made it out with your sense of humor intact."

"What else is there?" Valentine says. He stubs out his cigarette and straightens. "Thanks for getting me out, by the by. How'd you even know where to find me? Not many people knew where I went."

"I have my ways."

It's hard to tell on a robot, but Mac thinks Valentine looks somewhere between amused and annoyed. "Well, whatever your ways, I owe you one. You mentioned something about a missing persons case?"

"Yeah, it's… complicated." She shoots Mac an uneasy look, but he just holds up his hands. Not like he wants to get involved in her personal shit anyway.

"I'll just be over here."

"Thanks, MacCready," she says, and gives his shoulder another quick squeeze. She's got a good grip, steadying, and he smiles a little to himself as he goes over to wait in the doorway.

The December air nips hard at the back of his neck, and he shivers and wishes that he'd gotten around to putting in the extra lining in his duster like he meant to do a few weeks ago. Cold season hits a little harder up north here than it does in the Capital, and he's not going to be spending this one holed up all snug in Gunner quarters. Maybe he should forgo the smokes in favor of an extra sweater or something.

He watches Sole explain something to Valentine, her gestures muted in the small space between them. The detective pulls a little flipbook out of his coat pocket and makes a couple quick notes, then gives her a short nod and they exchange a friendly-looking handshake. Whatever favor she asked in return, it can't be too bad.

She comes back over as Valentine heads off down one of the side streets, hands stuck in her pockets and a pensive expression on her face. He clears his throat. "All good, Boss?"

"Hmm?" She gives a tiny shake of her head, and then a rueful smile. "Yeah, all good. Listen, there's something I wanted to talk about."

_That's always a bad sign,_ Mac thinks. "What's that?"

She shoves her hands a little deeper into her pockets and hunches her shoulders. “I think we made a pretty good team back there.”

Well, that was better than he was expecting. “Yeah?” says Mac, all casual, like she’s not the best fucking gun he’s ever worked with. “Not too shabby, I guess.”

“Better than that,” she says, with an amused look that says she sees right through his posturing. “I’ve run with soldiers that couldn’t keep up like you did.”

“Stop it, Boss, you’re going to make me blush,” he jokes, partly because he’s an asshole and partly because he doesn’t know what to do with an honest compliment. “What’s your point, anyway?”

She rolls her eyes. “My point, asshole, is that I’d be down to… extend our association a bit. If you are.”

_Fuck yes,_ he thinks immediately, but does his best to keep his eagerness off his face. She was quick enough to take advantage of his desperation earlier to drive down the price; no need to give her ammunition to do it again. “I might be,” he says cautiously. “Depends on what you’re asking.”

“Nothing too complicated. I’ve been picking up a fair bit of work lately, and I could really use a second gun. I’ve got some contracts to finish down in the city, but most of my work is out in the Commonwealth. Clearing out raider nests, feral packs, that kinda thing. It’s a lot of travelling, not sure if that’s a problem for you.”

Truth be told, Mac feels better on the open road then he does in the city - there’s a lot more room to shoot, for one thing, and a lot less people to bother you. A lot less safety in numbers, too, but her offer takes care of that pretty neat. Still, a whole lot of road with only two people on it either means you get real close, real quick, or your association tends to end bloody. He’s not sure how he feels about those odds just yet.

“Like I said, I came up from the Capital,” he says. “Travelling isn’t an issue.”

“Yeah, good, that’s what I figured,” she nods. “Look, the work is steady, I can tell you that much. I'm doing a sort of... freelance gig. Farmers and traders are always willing to pay for a little defense on hand. And the loot’s good, real fucking good. You could make a living just from that, most weeks.”

He doesn’t doubt it. "Doin' settlement work, huh? And here I thought the Minutemen were takin' care of that kinda thing these days."

She says nothing. His jaw drops.

"No way. You?"

"Uh, well." She looks about as discomfited as he's ever seen her. "You wanted full disclosure, right? I, uh, I'm the General, I guess." She grimaces, not seeming to notice the way his heart's suddenly lodged itself somewhere around the back of his throat. "God, that still sounds stupid. There's like ten of us, we're not much of an army, but- yeah. I led the hit on the Castle, so I guess that means I get the fancy hat." She scrubs a hand over the top of her bare head. "Metaphorically speaking. Look, is this going to be a problem? We've got buy-in from a bunch of the farms in the area, and the badge is like an automatic in on protection jobs even for the ones who don't fly the flag, so- Like I said, the work's steady. I'm not asking you to sign on the dotted line, just shoot some shit."

"I am good at that," he says, a little faintly. The _fucking_ Minutemen. Goddamn, but fate's a fickle bitch sometimes, ain't she? "No, uh, no problem on that front. As long as the caps are good."

The relieved grin that splits her face pinches at him a bit, but Mac isn’t about lying to himself. He doesn’t want to walk away from this, and he sure as hell doesn’t want her to walk away either. History's dead just like every other bastard he's shot, and he's paid his price in blood. If fate's going to drop this one in his lap, he's going to grab on for as long as he can.

“Trust me, there's no problem on that front. Full split on any loot we grab, and if we go through a lean week I’ll make up the different in caps - say, three hundred minimum? That sound fair?”

Better than any other offer he's likely to get anytime soon. _Fuck_ Winlock, anyway. Would it have been so hard to just leave him the fuck alone? “It’s on the low end of my usual price, but steady work is better no matter how you slice it, and I get the feeling that you don’t have a lot of lean weeks. Yeah, I could do that, for a while at least.” No sense in letting her get cocky. “Not promising forever.”

“And I’m not asking it,” she says. “We’ve each got our own shit to handle, I know how it goes. But if you’ve got a couple months to give me, I could sure as shit use the help.”

“I don't know about a couple months,” he temporizes. He's not making promises he can't keep, and with the Gunners on his back there's not a lot of longevity he can swear to. "Things are a little… up in the air for me at the moment."

"Fair enough," she says. She's tapping her fingers on her belt buckle again, but this time it doesn't feel like a threat, just thoughtful. "How about a couple weeks then? Nick said he's going to make the rounds of his usual haunts, let everyone know he's back in town, and then I'll meet him at his office. I don't want to wander too far from Boston til then. Think you could give me that?"

A couple weeks, yeah, he can definitely do that. They could make a pretty penny in that time, enough that he'll have some options for the first time in three years. He can figure out what he wants to do then. "Yeah," he says, and holds out his hand. "It's a deal."

“Fuckin’ A.” She grabs his hand in her own and gives it a hearty shake, a huge grin on her face. He grins back helplessly, weirdly aware of her ice-cold fingers from where her shooting gloves don’t cover, the way the smile pulls at the scars around her mouth. “It’s good to have you on board, MacCready. Damn good. I think we’re going to get along just fine.”

“You got it, Boss,” he says, and shoves his hands back in the pockets of his duster. “You just lead the way.”

###### 

Later that evening, holed up warm and safe in an abandoned building Sole decided was theirs for the night, Mac curls up in the the far corner and and pulls out a worn notebook and a pencil. He flips quickly through till he finds an empty page, then takes out his lighter and lights the little stump of a candle someone left on the floor, giving him just enough light to write by.

_Hey little man,_ he scratches out, slowly and carefully, _your old man’s luck might just have taken a turn for the better..._


	2. Chapter 2

The day after they rescue Valentine, they head back into Goodneighbor to sell off the loot. As promised, it's a tidy fucking haul, and she's scrupulous about the even split. They both buy out some ammo and supplies, and Mac splits his remaining share in half and leaves it with KLE0 for safekeeping. The boss declines to do the same when KLE0 offers, looking more amused than anything. She tosses her caps into a leather pouch slung around her neck and wanders off while he's still settling up his accounts.

He catches up to her in Daisy's, chatting with the proprietress with an insinuating smile and a hipshot lean against the counter that's half-sprawl. Daisy's doing a fair bit of leaning too, one elbow on the counter and a smile on her face that's downright flirtatious, and Mac hesitates in the doorway, not wanting to step in and ruin things. The boss, she's pretty fucking charming, if more than a tad crazy. But Daisy sees all kinds come through her doors, and while she's always talking up her looks in that husky voice of hers, he's never seen her with that private little smile, either.

Eventually, he figures it's going to be weird to just lurk in the doorway like some kind of creeper, so he scuffs his feet over the doorframe and steps in. He can't be interrupting _too_ bad, not from the way Daisy looks up at him and smiles in honest delight.

"Robert Joseph MacCready! Sole here was tellin' me she'd picked you up, but I didn't believe it myself till just now. How've you been, kid?"

"Same as ever, Daise, 'cept I've attached myself to this madwoman." Sole turns and gives him a smirk, and he finds himself grinning back. "You know she's keeping all her caps on her?"

"Oh, honey, don't do that," Daisy says. She seems genuinely concerned - the boss must have made an impression on her. "KLE0's got great rates, and nobody ever tries to hit her stash."

"I can handle myself," Sole says peaceably.

"The best gun in the world can't do much against a Goodneighbor pickpocket, Boss."

"Hmm," she says. Then, to his bemusement, she starts undoing the buckles on her chestpiece. He shoots a look at Daisy, who only shrugs and seems plenty happy to watch as the boss starts undoing the buttons on her shirt, as well. When she tugs at the gray undershirt underneath Mac starts getting the feeling like maybe he should be elsewhere - but she only drops the pouch with her caps into her shirt, flat against her skin, then does up her whole rig once more, nice and tight. And grins at him.

"Somebody manages to get to that, I've got bigger worries than the caps."

Mac tilts his head in rueful acknowledgement. "Fair enough. Leastaways you've got bribe money on hand if you need it."

"Or the cash to hire a merc," she says, amused. She tips a smile that's entirely too charming for her own good over to Daisy. "It's always nice to do business with such a lovely woman."

"Oh stop it," Daisy says, though she's got a look on her face that says if she could blush, she would be. "Good luck out there. You need to clear your bags again, you know where to find me."

"It's a promise," Sole says, and gives one last wink before heading out the door.

Mac and Daisy exchange glances.

"You got yourself a live one, there, kid," she says after a moment. Mac laughs, almost in spite of himself.

"Dunno that I've got her so much as the other way around," he admits. "She's a fu-freakin' rad storm."

"Worse contracts to take, though."

"Maybe," he says, thinking of her lunatic grin, the way she went calm under fire like nobody he's ever met. "Caps look good, at least. We'll see about the rest."

"Good lookin' out, kid," she tells him, and he grins back at her before settling in to jaw a little, counting out the caps to square away his payment north for Duncan's board. He got a few months behind, what with the lack of paying work coming his way, but with the payment for the vault job and his share of loot off the Triggermen, he's got enough to settle up and cover an advance for the next six months. Hopefully he won't need it, with the work Sole's promised him, but a bird in the hand, don't count your chickens, better safe than sorry, etc, etc. Mac likes to plan ahead.

When they're done, he leans across the counter to give Daisy a kiss on her leathery cheek and heads off to find the boss. She hasn't gone far; she's sitting on the bench just outside, running her knife over a whetstone with a meaningful eye towards a hopeful pickpocket, who seems to be in the process of deciding to find somewhere else to be. She looks up when he ambles over, tucking the whetstone away in her pocket. Her cap casts a faint shadow over the bridge of her freckled nose. "We good to go?"

"Up to you, Boss," he tells her. "Ready to head out whenever you are."

"That's what I like to hear." The knife disappears back into her sleeve, almost too quick for his eye to follow. When she stands she's only an inch or two shorter than him, and most of that, he's gotta admit, are from the low, thin soles in her boots. He's already seen how quiet she can move in them. "Hope you like reading, MacCready."

"What's that?"

Her teeth flash white as she turns towards the gate. "Apparently the Boston Library has a bit of a super-mutant problem."

_God damn it, Daisy_ , he thinks, resigned. She's been after someone to clean that place out for _months_. "Boss, that's crazy."

"Crazy's relative," she says, and pulls out her rifle as the guards crank open the gate. "Besides, you'll get used to it."

###### 

He stands by his assessment that the entire plan is fucking crazy, but maybe crazy works for her, because damned if they don't pull it off. It gets a little dicey in the middle - right around when the Protectrons wander out from the back room, mother _fucker_ \- but they get through it with nothing more than a couple bruises from a really ignominious tumble down the stairs. It takes hours, though, to do a full sweep of the place, cleaning out all the stragglers and making sure that the location is secure. By the time they're done, winter's early sunset is already causing the buildings to cast long shadows over the streets, and by silent mutual accord they close and blockade the doors and make themselves a nest in one of the cleaner areas in the top floor, where the mutants hadn't had a chance to make their filthy dens.

The boss disappears for a while after their meager supper - cold rations, since they didn't want to risk a fire - and comes back an hour later hauling a bunch of machine parts she must have pried out of the Protectrons. Mac can't make heads or tails of it all, and he can't see what's so special about _those_ bits as opposed to all the _other_ bits that she left behind, but she sits there by candlelight for the rest of the evening, with a little folding knife and a screwdriver she had in her pocket, cleaning and disassembling the pieces. Easier to carry, he assumes. Or maybe just something to do with her hands in the meantime.

Mac himself spends the evening in the light sniper's doze he perfected as a kid: not technically asleep, being that he's got his eyes open and he can still see and react to what's going on, but not particularly checked in, either. He knows from long experience that he can spend hours or days in this state, only rousing long enough to get food or make sure he doesn't cramp. Sometimes noise can keep him up, but the boss's fiddling is quiet and oddly soothing. He hasn't known her that long, but the couple of firefights they've been through are enough to let him know that she'll watch his back.

Until she doesn't need him anymore, of course - but that's always the way. For now, he can let his guard down a bit.

He's not sure of how much time has passed when he feels her hand on his shoulder, pulling him back up. She looms large over him, slightly hazy from his doze and the guttering candlelight, and he blinks up at her, surprised by her nearness and surprised by the absence of the usual rush of adrenaline that comes when someone sneaks up on him. _Man, she's got a lot of freckles,_ he thinks, hazily.

"Get some sleep," she tells him, her voice barely above a murmur. "We're going to head out at dawn."

"Watch?" he mumbles back, which isn't really what you'd call a complete sentence, but she seems to take his meaning just fine.

"Trapped the doorways. We're good for tonight. We can work out rotations when we're on the road."

"'kay." She gives him one last squeeze of his shoulder, and then goes over to her own bedroll, curls up under the blanket with her back to him. She's got eyes on the staircase, he notes approvingly. Watching the entry point even in sleep.

He lets himself slide down into his own bedroll, and finds himself watching the rise and fall of her back through the thick blanket. She doesn't snore, but after a few moments the quiet susurrus of her breath slows and evens out into sleep, and Mac finds himself following her down.

###### 

They stump back into Goodneighbor, sell off their shit and take their pay from Daisy, who seems pleased that they made it through alive and even more pleased that the library is clear. There's this happy nostalgia that comes over her face when she talks about visiting it as a kid, and it sinks in all over again for him that she's really and truly over two hundred years old. Some of the other residents like to bother her about the world was like before, but Mac never did. Why bring up that kind of pain?

The boss takes him down to the Third Rail to buy him a drink to celebrate, and one drink turns into a few, and the last thing he really remembers is her shooting him an ironic salute on her way out the door, mouthing "Rex" at him so he knows where to find her the next morning. He gives her a thumbs-up and goes back to his conversation with the drifter coming up from the south, and the rest of the night is pretty much a blur until he wakes up the next morning to a pounding in his head.

No, wait, it's someone pounding on his door. He stumbles to his feet, scrubs his hands over his face (he's gonna need to shave soon), does a quick check to make sure he's decent (still fully clothed, including his hat, what the fuck did he drink last night?) and makes it to the door, checking through the peephole. Sure as shit, on the other side's the boss, fully strapped and looking way too cheerful for his peace of mind.

"What time is it?" he growls, and watches her distorted image smirk at him.

"Time for good boys and girls to get over their hangovers and hit the road, genius. We've got work."

"I hate you," he says, and opens the door. "Gimme a minute to get ready."

"Take your time." She comes in and shuts the door behind her, then stays there, arms crossed over her chest. She makes it look like she doesn't care enough to move, boneless in her lean with one ankle crossed over the other, but he can tell by the quick flicker of her eyes around the room that it's a cat's courtesy, an unwillingness to intrude on his territory. Polite of her.

"Just be a minute," he says, and heads into the bathroom. Not like he's got any shit lying around that she could fuck with, anyway. He hasn't had more of a stash hole than his pack since he left the Gunners - too dangerous to keep shit lying around when he might have to leave at a moment's notice. KLE0 keeps anything he can't carry with him.

A two-minute scrub over some strategic places and a couple passes with his straight razor, and he starts to feel almost human again. He tugs his kit back on, shrugging into his duster and pulling on his gloves, then heads back out to load up on his weapons. The boss, he notes, hasn't moved an inch.

"You said we had work," he says. "What kind?"

"Pest control," she says. "Apparently the Triggermen are making a go at muscling in on Goodneighbor. Contract came through the bartender last night."

"Yeah?" he says, holstering his rifle and hunting around for his ammo belt. Where the fuck did he leave it last night? "And who's footing the bill? No way old Charlie has the caps for something like that. Or the balls."

"He wasn't too happy to share, but off the record, Hancock." Maybe he kicked it under the bed. He can feel her eyes on the back of his neck as he goes to his knees and starts rooting around. "Apparently the good mayor doesn't like competition."

"Not surprising," he grunts. He stretches out as far as he can go, and his fingers bump up against familiar leather. Success! "Charlie doesn't say boo without Hancock knowing about it. One of his better-known agents."

"Yeah, I figured." He pulls the belt out, brushes off a few intrepid dust bunnies, and buckles it on. "Not like I care either way. Work's work, and one gang or the other doesn't mean much to me."

"Hancock's a pretty stand-up guy." He squares up his cap and watches her eyes flick quickly over him before she turns and opens the door. "Always makes sure to get a cut, sure, but he doesn't get involved in the really dirty stuff, and he makes sure that people leave the newbies alone long enough to learn the ropes. Could be a lot worse."

"You'll get no argument from me." She steps aside to let him out the door, and falls in step with him heading down the hall. "Stabbed a guy over me on my first day in. I like the guy just fine."

He gives her a quick sideways look. "Is that all it takes to make a good impression on you?"

"Don't worry, MacCready." She takes point heading down the stairs, though she does it smoothly enough that he wouldn't have noticed if he wasn't looking for it. "You've already impressed me plenty."

The morning sunlight stabs him in the face when they hit the streets, even as weak as it is filtering down through the buildings, reminding him that he had way too fucking much to drink last night. He takes it for the well-deserved punishment that it is and just squints into it, but next to him the boss makes an amused noise and taps him on the wrist. "Here," she says, handing over her shades. "You need these more than I do right now."

"You're a peach, Boss." The sunglasses are still a little warm from where they've been in her pocket when he slides them onto his face, and the abrupt cessation of the stabbing beams of cheerful sunlight make him sigh in relief. "You'll get 'em back."

"Nah, keep 'em. Those are my spares." And she suits action to word, pulling out another pair from her pocket and sliding them onto her nose.

He grins at her. "Aw. We match."

"Proper pair of badasses, we," she agrees, and tilts her cap down at a rakish angle. "Alright, MacCready. Let's go kill some bad guys."

###### 

They hit the Triggermen hard and fast, working their way through the targeted enclaves one after another until they're all gone. The first one they hit gets caught with their pants down, but after that they're waiting for them: tripwires, mines, the whole works. He and the boss share an amused look as she cuts the first wire, and later they bunk out on the roof of the warehouse, splitting a bottle of whiskey and a pack of smokes they lifted from the thugs' stash in amiable silence. They fall asleep watching the patterns the wind makes on clouds gone orange from light pollution, then get up the next morning to do it again.

It takes them three days. Three days, to clean out the biggest gang this side of Diamond City. When the boss asks him if he wants to tag along for another contract from Hancock, there's really only one answer he can give.

The rest of his two weeks are a whirlwind, one job after another. Hancock's gig takes them out to Pickman Gallery, which leaves him rad-sick from the sewage and another few nightmares to add to the pile. Of course, he doesn't have time to dwell on it, because Sole hears something on her Minuteman radio that sends them haring off to Haymarket Mall, where they end up mowing their way through what seems like a couple dozen raiders, all on their lonesome. The boss drops him to off at the Rex to mainline Radaway and recover and is back the next day, contract in hand, asking him how he feels about the Silver Shroud. And shit, he's not going to say no to a run on a fuckin' comic store, even if it _is_ full of ferals. She turns out to be a closet comics fan herself - though it turns out she likes Grognak better than _The Unstoppables_ , what the fuck. They're still arguing about it on the way back ("I'm just saying, the Unstoppables were better _before_ they added Grognak. His shtick doesn't really jive in a team setting, it was a cash grab pure and simple.") when she picks up a distress call on her Pip-Boy and says, "Huh."

"Boss, _no,"_ Mac says reflexively, because two weeks is just long enough for him to learn to fear that tone of voice, but she just grins at him.

"C'mon, it might be interesting."

Mac, as it turns out, objects _strenuously_ to her definition of interesting.

Still, when it's done, he finds himself standing at the top of Trinity Tower, twenty floors of dead greenskins between him and the ground, and can't help the brief but total rush of feeling, just for a moment, fucking invincible. He's hit mutie dens before, plenty of times, but he's never done it with anything less than a full squad of mercs, and he can count on hand the number of times he's done it without at least one casualty. But here they are, right in the heart of mutie territory, just the two of them without a scratch on them. She is un-fucking-believable, like something out of a freaking comic book. Nobody could have pulled off this job, but here they are. The goddamn Unstoppables.

Of course, reinforcements start pouring in a minute later and they have to book it for the elevator, but still. He's not going to forget that moment for a long damn time.

The boss pulls a Fat Man off the leader, too, so _she's_ feeling peppy, and they've got themselves the best fucking bar story of all time - cleared out an entire mutie den just to save some asshole who wanted to teach Shakespeare to a bunch of greenskins - so Mac suggests they stop by the Combat Zone. He hasn't been in there in a few months, not since he got a target on his back, but who's going to bother MacCready when he's got someone like Sole at his back? And the boss, she's always looking to make new friends, so off they go.

Only it turns out that the crowd's taken a turn for the worse since he last came through here, because some idiot on guard duty takes a potshot at them as they come up the road. Mac's not sure if it's new policy of if the guy just takes exception to their face, but the boss sure as shit takes exception to being shot at, that much he knows for goddamn sure. Mac watches her set down her new Fat Man and bids a wistful farewell to his easy night of drinking, because he knows exactly how this is going to go.

He ends up in the rafters after Sole clears out the outer guard, and spends an enjoyable half-hour shooting the metaphorical fish in the metaphorical barrel while the boss wreaks havoc on the ground floor. Afterwards Tommy's too busy getting into a truly flaming row with the redhead with the killer right hook to kick them out, so he and the boss finish picking over the bodies and retire to the upper levels with a bottle to ride out the night. The redhead comes storming up to join them at some point - Cait, shit, that's her name - and they all get shitfaced drunk on the Zone's terrible fucking whiskey, trading bullshit battle stories and singing along to the radio until Tommy starts banging a broom under the floor to get them to shut up. Mac doesn't remember much after that, but he's pretty sure he gets completely crushed in an arm-wrestling contest and swearing undying love, so honestly he's just as glad not to recall it with any significant degree of clarity. It's a good night, aside from the crushing humiliation; Mac's happy to keep it that way.

And then the next morning they bit a fond farewell to Cait and stagger, half-blind and hungover, out of the bar and straight into a shootout between a handful of raiders and _mother fucking Swann._

Upside, Mac gets to use the Fat Man. He's pretty sure the blast that comes nuking that fucking thing back to the stone age can be seen in _space_.

"This is the best day of my life," he says dazedly, and goes to figure out where the boss got herself off to.

She's looking a little worse for the wear when he finally tracks her down, hunkered down at the water's edge and poking through the a couple of old chests that look like they haven't been touched since the War. "Hey, if it isn't the hero of the hour!" she calls, when she spots him. "Come look at this shit. Did you know that Swann was an Institute reject?"

"I'm not surprised," Mac tells her, setting the Fat Man down next to her pack. "They've got their creepy fingers in every little-"

His train of thought stops cold at the sight of blood on her collar.

He doesn't remember closing the distance between them, but Sole looks surprised to see him looming over her, so it must have been fast. She looks even more surprised when he grabs her chin and pulls her head around to face him, but she lets him do it, eyes narrowed more with confusion than threat. "MacCready, what the fuck?"

It's not her throat. There's a big-ass slice down her right cheek, big enough that he's surprised she's still talking, but it's not her throat. He goes to his knees in front of her with an abrupt thump.

"Your face, Boss," he says, and he would explain further, but she grimaces in sudden recognition. The expression makes the wound gape open even further, and she grunts in pain as her hands comes up to press it closed. 

“ _Balls,_ ” she says with feeling. _"Fuck me_ that hurts.”

“Did you not notice before?” he says, relief making his drawl more pronounced than usual, and she gives him a wry look.

“Adrenaline is a hell of a drug.”

“So’s Med-X, which you’re going to need in a minute,” he tells her, his hands already busy on his pack. “I don’t think I’ve got the kit to stitch it up here.”

“‘s fine, I want to get us out of the open anyway.” Her words are a little slurred from the palm she has still clamped to her face. Blood oozes down past the heel of her hand, slower than before but just as determined. “Think we picked up some superglue a while back. Just fuckin' glue it shut until we can get to a doctor.”

“It’s going to hurt,” he tells her, and she rolls her eyes.

“Already fuckin’ hurts. Just get it done, I need to clean some of this blood off me before we started attracting ferals.”

That’d be the last fucking thing this day needs, so he makes haste to find the little tube of superglue - tucked away in one of the side pockets in her pack, along with a jumble of circuitry and wires he doesn’t look at too closely - and a relatively clean piece of cloth torn off his spare shirt. “You’re going to owe me a replacement for that,” he warns her, and she just gives him a tired - and bloody - smile and shrugs agreeably.

“I think I can afford it.” She tilts up her chin. “Go for it.”

He gingerly peels her hand away, and doesn’t flinch away from the gory mess on her face only because he’s seen worse too many times before. He’s fast with the rag, and not overly gentle, but she keeps her head steady during her instinctive flinch of pain, and he only feels the shudder that rolls down her spine because of his grip on her shoulder, bracing himself in an awkward crouch over her. With the blood wiped away, he pulls the lid off the superglue with his teeth and applies it liberally, messy with haste but good enough.

She hands him the second bit of cloth without being asked, and he carefully places it over the rapidly pinkening blur of glue and presses tight. “Hold that,” he tells her, and Sole complies wordlessly. It takes another couple of layers before the blood stops seeping through immediately, and then he tears up the rest of the shirt and wraps the whole mess a couple of times around her head. It looks fuckin' stupid when he's done, but the bleeding seems to have stopped. Good enough.

He can still feel her gaze on him as he turns to scrub the blood off his hands in the murky water of the pond, but he resolutely doesn't turn around. The few scraps of shirt that are left he wets down to use as a rag, cleaning the few splatters that got up his sleeves before turning to offer it to her. "You want to scrub up?"

"Prob'ly should."

He manages to last for about thirty seconds of her ineffectual, pain-dazed swiping before he makes a grab for the rag. "Yeah, no, gimme that back."

The cleanup proceeds more efficiently after he takes over, though he has to reach around her kind of awkwardly a couple times to get to it all, and he has to rinse the rag out twice before he's done. (Hopefully Swann ate anything else that was living in there, or they're about to be in deep fucking trouble, considering how much blood he just dumped in the water.) Her coat's still stained when he's done, but it's hard to see against the dark leather, and more important, there won't be smell enough to carry. "There you go, all clean."

“You’re a prince, MacCready.” She rocks unsteadily up to her knees. “'kay. Let’s hit the road.”

He pushes her back down before she can get very far. “Not just yet,” he says, and ignores her annoyed look in order to root around in his pack. “Just a couple things first.”

“Nursemaid is not something I expected from you,” she complains, but stays put. Good to know she’s not _entirely_ crazy.

“It’s field medicine, and you’ll shut up and take it if you want to get back to Goodneighbor in one piece.”

“Bossy,” she says, but not like she minds. “Whatcha got?”

He pulls a couple things from his pack. “Water,” he says, which she accepts, and “Med-X,” which she does not. “Oh, come on. Your cheek is in pieces, and from the way you went flying earlier I’d be surprised if you don’t have at least one cracked rib. You need a real doc to set that, and there sure ain't one around here.” She scowls at him, and he scowls back. “Look, I’m not the biggest fan of chems myself, but seriously. What’s the hold up?”

She purses her lips. “Can’t shoot straight on that stuff.”

“Oh, for-” He scrubs a hand over his face. “You’re not going to be able to walk straight without it. You want I should carry you?”

“No, but-”

“Boss,” he says, cutting her off. Her eyes are wide and dark, fixed on his face, and it takes everything he has not to shiver under the sudden gale force of her undivided attention. “I got your back. Trust me.”

“Okay,” she says after a minute, and the tense line of her shoulders goes limp. “Yeah, okay, MacCready. Hit me up.”

Her right hand is still clamped to her face, so when she extends the left towards him he just pulls her hand into his lap, pushes up her sleeve and pulls the cap off the syringe with his teeth. He gets the needle into the vein on the first try. Not a big fan of chems, yeah, but he’s no stranger to them either. Any teetotaller in the wasteland’s either dead or lying.

It hits her almost immediately, and she goes limp and boneless with the initial rush, her head lolling back against the fence as her eyes droop closed. It’ll be a couple minutes before it wears down enough for her to stand, so he busies himself packing up their gear. She’s not going to be up to carrying her usual weight, and he won’t be able to shoulder her pack _and_ his _and_ shoot, so he shuffles through her stuff, moves some of the heaviest over into his own. Her shotgun is still holstered on her thigh - she never had time to pull it, not after the thing got close - and her rifle he manages to strap onto his pack for safekeeping.

The Fat Man, he leaves next to Swann's corpse with a mournful look. They only had one shell for it, and damned it he didn’t use it well, but still. “Easy come, easy go,” he sighs, and stands up, slings his pack onto his shoulders. “Hey Boss, you back?”

“How people take this shit and do stuff is beyond me,” she croaks, but her eyes are open again. Pupils damn near as wide as a cat’s, but they’re open.

“Mostly, they don’t,” he says, and holds down his hand. “C’mon, time to hit the road.”

“That’s my line,” she complains, but she takes his offered hand in a surprisingly strong grip and hauls herself upward. Sways a little once she’s up, but she stays up, squinting blearily around. “I think I’m going blind.”

“That’s just the sunlight, Boss,” he says, and pulls the spares she gave him out of his pocket, slides them gently onto her face. “Your pupils are blown. Better?”

He can’t quite see her blinking behind the lenses, but from the way her brow is squinched up, he knows she’s doing it. “Yeah, thanks,” she says, her voice full of slow-motion surprise. “Hey, what happened to mine?”

“Squished," he says, with a sideways look at Swann's body. At some point, he's going to process the fact that they _actually fucking killed it_ , but today is not that day. "And those are yours, remember?”

“Nah, gave ‘em to you."

He can’t help but smile a little. “Well, I’m giving them back.”

“Remind me to pick you up another pair,” she instructs. He laughs a little under his breath as he picks up her pack and helps her shoulder into it.

“Along with my shirt.”

“Obviously.”

“Yeah, Boss, I’ll remind you.” He tweaks the straps to make sure they’re steady, checks on her cheek one last time - still no blood showing through, she should be good until they can get her some proper stitches - and taps her on the shoulder. “You good to go?”

She gives him the slow, loose grin of the extremely high. Somehow, on her it still manages to look dangerous. “You lead the way, MacCready. I’ll follow.”

Something about it makes heat flush down the back of his neck, and he busies himself picking up her cap from the ground and tucking it down onto her head. “Gotcha, Boss. Let’s get out of the open.”

###### 

The Med-X has well and truly worn off by the time they limp back into Goodneighbor, but thankfully, Doctor Amari’s still open for business. MacCready sees her into the doc’s capable, if acerbic, care, then gets himself back to his hotel room to take a proper shower. He stinks of blood and sweat and road dirt and other shit he doesn’t want to think about, and once he’s on his own he’s suddenly desperate to get the rest of Sole’s blood scrubbed off his hands. He has to do most of his scrubbing in the sink first, but the two-minute shower is worth every extra cap he paid the front desk to open the pipes.

He looks at his blurry reflection in the glass afterwards, notes the trembling in his hands and the bloodshot stress of his eyes. “Too close,” he tells himself, and doesn’t let himself think about why it’s hitting him so hard. “Way too close.”

When she comes to find him a couple hours later, he’s already posted up at the Third Rail, though he’s only on his second drink. He’s thinking- well, not anything so conscious as _thinking,_ but his instinct is to stay more or less sober until he’s sure that she’s steady again. He’s not going to let himself get plastered when she might still need him to watch her back.

But when she comes down and leans up against the bar next to him, she’s clearly back in fighting form already: her gear scrubbed down and polished, her hair still wet from a shower (she must have ponied up the caps too), and a bandage fixed to her cheek, snowy-white and pristine. But her hands are steady, and her eyes are clear, and he’d know the sharp report of her boots on the floor anywhere.

Damn, it’s good to see her.

“The doc let you go?” he asks, and she immediately makes an annoyed face.

“After much bitching about proper wound care, _yes._ ” She rolls her eyes. “Like I’ve never been cut up before. C’mon. Look at this face.”

_Another scar for her collection_ , he thinks, somewhere between wry and fond. _Fuck_ , but that was close. “Not everyone can have your devil-may-care attitude, Boss,” he teases, and laughs at the face she makes. “Still though. Good you got the all-clear.”

“More or less,” she admits. “She told me to take it easy for a couple days though.”

“Think you can manage that?”

“I'm familiar with the concept." There's a glitter in her eyes that leaves him feeling vaguely concerned about her idea of shore leave, but she turns away before he can say anything, picking up the can of water he ordered for her and taking a thirsty swallow. "Ah, it's just as well," she says, when she's done. "I’m supposed to meet Nick back in DC day after tomorrow, no time to take on a new contract.”

_Shit, it’s been two weeks._ His stomach contracts at the thought. He’d only promised her that much when he started because he thought he might want to go his own way by then, but now... Shit, what if she doesn’t want to reup their deal? They’ve had a pretty good thing going, but maybe her business with Valentine is the kind that doesn't need a second gun.

“Time flies." And then, with his best attempt to sound casual: “You want some company?”

He doesn’t miss the flicker of her eyes over his face, but he has no fucking clue what she sees there. Two weeks is long enough for him to know that she likes whiskey better than vodka and beer better than both, that she's got shitty taste in comics and if she can't kill someone who annoys her she'll definitely rob them blind, that if she's getting quiet and thoughtful it's time for him to get worried - but it's sure as shit not long enough for him to figure out what goes on in that head of hers. He's not sure _anything_ would be long enough.

After a moment, she takes another sip of her water and says, cautiously, “If you don’t mind."

“Nah," he says, like his gut isn't turning flips with relief. "I’ve got some business of my own I can take care of.” He’s heard Vadim set up shop here with his brother, and there’s a good chance that the right amount of caps might be able to buy the Gunner hideout Winlock took over after Mac left. Not that he’s any closer to figuring out what the _fuck_ he's going to do when he gets it, but still. A next step's a next step. "Heading out tomorrow?”

“Yeah, I figure we can bunk down in the city tomorrow night, take care of our business after. That work for you?”

“Yeah, I know a couple places we could stay, if you need it.”

“Always making yourself useful,” she says, and squeezes his shoulder. “Hey. MacCready.”

He’s not proud of the way his heart rate picks up at the sudden serious tone of her voice. “Yeah?”

“Thanks,” she says, and the worry slides back out of him, leaving a euphoric rush of relief in its place.

“Anytime, Boss.”


	3. Chapter 3

Diamond City isn’t that much different from Goodneighbor, when you get down to it. Paint job’s a little different, maybe, and there’s a lot more kids and a lot less ghouls, but the bones of the place aren’t too different. Just goes to show, people are the same the world over. No matter how DC likes to think of itself as superior.

If anything, the main difference is the tension. It sings like a plucked chord in the air of the marketplace, almost tangible in the darting glances of the security guards, the false smiles on the shopkeepers, the low hushed whispers of the patrons. Mac wouldn’t have credited it if he hadn’t seen it with his own two eyes - but Diamond City, the great green jewel of the Commonwealth, is choking to death on its own fear.

The boss can feel it too, he can tell: her stride slows to an aimless-seeming amble, and her thumbs hook into her belt, leaving her hands down near her holsters. She’s doing her best to look like a tourist, but he can feel the wary tension in her, and she keeps close to him as they maneuver through the marketplace, her shoulder bumping against his.

“Never thought I’d feel in more danger here than in Goodneighbor,” he murmurs in her ear, and feels her soft laugh vibrate through their point of contact back to him.

“There they’ll just stab you in the back,” she murmurs back. “Here you might have a mob cheering them on.”

Mac eyes the tight-mouthed shopkeepers, and feels a shiver run down his spine.

It’s late afternoon by the time they get to the city, and they take a quick break just inside the gates to go through their packs and swap some of the loot around, splitting up the take with the ease of a task rapidly becoming familiar. Then they go their separate ways for a few hours, the better to sell off their haul. He doesn’t see her again till dinner, though he does spot her a couple times when they end up on the same block, dickering up a buyer with the skill of a true scavver. He smiles and moves on.

He meets her back at Power Noodles at sunset, as previously agreed, and finds her plowing through what looks like her second bowl, steadfastly attempting to ignore an attractive dark-haired woman with a red jacket perched on the stool next to her. Mac slides in on her other side, flips a couple caps to the bot, and tucks his pack under the stool, one booted foot sitting protectively on the top. Diamond City dippers are even more skilled than the Goodneighbor variant.

“Heya, Boss.”

“MacCready,” Sole says, giving him a friendly nudge with her elbow. “This is Piper Wright, Diamond City’s resident reporter.”

Yeah, he’s heard the name before. “Pleasure.”

“Nice to meetcha,” Piper says, with a glance just dismissive enough to let him know not to bother offering his hand. “Look, I’m just sayin’, you still owe me that story.”

Sole doesn’t look up from her noodles. “How d’you figure?”

“Well, I got you through the gates, didn’t I?”

“Unless DC suddenly developed a prejudice against private citizens looking to do a little business, I don’t think _you_ got me in at all. The way I remember it, it was more like the other way around. Or are you trying to tell me you _didn’t_ get locked out because you pissed off the Mayor?”

“Well,” Piper hedges. “it’s all just semantics, right? The point is, I helped you out. The least you could do is give me something juicy for my next issue.”

“I think the least I could do is _nothing,_ which is what I’m doing right now,” Sole says. “Gimme a break, Piper. I’m trying to enjoy dinner with my compatriot here, and you’re interrupting.”

Piper gives him another scornful glance. “What, you’re hiring mercs now?”

“I _am_ a merc, Pipe,” Sole says patiently. “I just happen to be a merc with a fancy title. Now, unless you’re gonna buy me a round, get out of here.”

“I’ll get it outta you yet,” Piper threatens, hopping off the stool. “Just you wait.”

It’s a threat that loses some of its _oomph_ from the way she’s smiling, and judging by the easy grin the boss gives her in return, she knows it. “Good to see you, Trouble,” Sole says affectionately. “Even if you are a pain in the ass. Say hello to the Pipsqueak for me.”

“Come by after dinner and say hello yourself,” Piper retorts, but she leans in to give Sole a kiss on the cheek. “See ya later, Blue.”

She saunters off, and Mac isn’t ashamed to say that takes a minute to enjoy watching her go before he turns back to Sole. “Blue?”

“She’s the sort who likes nicknames,” Sole says with a shrug, and changes the subject. “You sell off the rest of your gear?”

“Most of it,” he says. His noodles arrive a moment later, and takes a minute to shove a bite in his mouth before mumbling out, “Figure I’ll hit the rest tomorrow morning, when a few more of the shops are open. You?”

“Same,” she says, then scowls. “Only, I’m supposed to meet with Nick tomorrow morning. Think you can take some of my share and split the caps after? I don’t want to head out into the wastes with a heavy pack.”

So she’s still planning on leaving soon - hell, she probably wants to leave tomorrow, after her meeting with Nick. That’s _really_ soon. And she still hasn’t said anything about whether or not she’ll be wanting him to come with. On the other hand, she's trusting him with some of her share, that's a good sign, right?

Mac takes another big bite and gives himself time to chew before he nods easily. Fuck it. He's not going to let himself worry about it. “Sure, Boss, no problem. You got a bunk for the night?”

“Yeah, you?”

He swung by the Dugout earlier, and Vadim wasn’t in, but Yefim was, and they still run a boarding house out of the back. “Yeah, at the Dugout. You want to meet there for lunch tomorrow, after your meeting?”

She nudges him with her shoulder, smiling easily. “Sounds like a plan.”

She doesn’t move away after, and neither does he, and they eat their noodles in comfortable silence, their shoulders brushing against each other. He still has no idea what tomorrow is going to bring - but that's tomorrow. And tonight, he's eating some damn tasty noodles with the boss. There are worse places to be.

After dinner, she loads up her extras in his pack and they split up, her waving cheerfully over her shoulder as she heads off towards what looks like the Publick Occurrences office. Mac takes himself off to the gardens, where he knows there’ll be light enough to work by and not too many people to bother him. With everything that’s been going on, he hasn’t had much of a chance to keep up with his writing. Not it should matter, nobody’s going to notice or give a damn if he misses a few days, but- it just does. It matters to him, like other promises he hasn’t always been too great about keeping.

He thinks he sees the boss on his way over to the Dugout later, the familiar slant of her narrow shoulders, but she’s sitting on the steps of the newspaper building talking to a kid that’s got Piper’s dark hair, so he leaves her be. _Tomorrow,_ he tells himself, as he waves to Yefim on the way back to his rooms. _I’ll ask her tomorrow if she still wants me around._

###### 

The next morning, he grabs breakfast from one of the little stalls and finds himself a nice little out-of-the-way corner, watching the flow of people while he eats. The mood in a city is always different first thing in the morning than it is at the end of the day, and he wants to take the measure of the place while he’s got the chance.

People don't really seem any less fearful, on second reflection, but it's a little more faded this early, like people's ability to deal with whatever tension is riding them wanes with the sun. He'd heard that people's paranoia about synths was getting out of hand in DC, but he didn't realize it was this bad. In Goodneighbor people just had a few brawls and Hancock shouted something that sounded nice from the rooftops and everyone was pretty much over it. On the other hand, in Goodneighbor you don't usually have a lot of people who'd miss you if you were gone, so it’s hard for people to get too worked up about it. In principle, sure, nobody wants some shadowy organization trying to take over, but the fear of your friends and family getting replaced is considerably diminished when you don’t have any of either.

Diamond City, though. Diamond City is _worked the fuck up_ over synths. Mac can't entirely figure out why, not until he finds a stray copy of Publick Occurrences and reads through the main article - and then it's not much of a surprise at all.

_Well, Boss,_ he thinks. _Interesting friends you keep. Wonder if she'll realize what she did by the time the riots start?_ Because from what he’s seeing, it’s really only a matter of time. He’s a little surprised someone hasn’t died already. Or maybe they have, and Ms. Wright elected not to report on that. Conscience can bite hard; he knows that better than most.

It's not really any skin off his nose, though. He doesn't plan to spend too much time here - not really much call for his line of work inside the gates - and he’s not going to let himself get worked up over someone else’s problems. He’s got plenty of his own.

It takes another couple of hours to empty his pack, and he keeps scrupulous track of the caps that came from Sole’s share, stashing them in a separate pocket so he doesn’t get them mixed up. When he’s done it’s not quite noon, and he loiters around the Dugout patio for a few minutes, hoping to spot a glimpse of her - but whatever she’s up to with Valentine, it’s obviously not over yet, so he sighs and heads inside. Might as well get a drink while he waits.

Wherever Vadim was off to yesterday, he’s back behind the bar today, looking just the same as Mac remembers him, a little more weather-beaten but still with that damnable twinkle in his eye. Mac bellies up to the bar and waits till Vadim's done with a customer down at the other end, slaps his open palm on the bar to catch his attention. "Vadim! Still killin' people with your moonshine?"

"MacCready!" Vadim trills, and Mac laughs at how honestly happy the man seems to see him. "Is good to see you, _tovarich_. What brings you to the Commonwealth?"

"I could ask you the same, you old shark."

"Eh." Vadim shrugs his heavy shoulders. Hasn't lost any of his muscle, Mac notes. "Business, always business, yeah? But you! Thought you were out, but here you are. You looking for work?"

He probably would have, if the boss hadn't found him. His stash was getting pretty low, and he'd known Vadim would have something. Old bastard would take it back double somehow, always does, but it might have been worth it at the time. Now, though-

"Nah, I hired on with someone already," he says, shaking his head. "Actually came here to meet the boss. You're just a pleasant side benefit."

"Hah!" Vadim says, and slaps the bar. "I'll take it. Good that you have work, though. A man needs work when he has a wife."

Mac's stomach drops down to his toes, but Vadim just continues, oblivious. "And how is Lucy, yes? Still as bee-you-ti-ful as I remember?"

"She, uh." He licks his lips. "She didn't make it, Vadim."

"Oh," Vadim says. Flat, awkward. No good way to take bad news. "I'm sorry. Mouth tends to be faster than brain."

"It's all right," Mac says, and tries to pretend that it is. "It was a few years ago."

"Still." Vadim sighs heavily. "Tell you what, I give you a drink on the house. For old times."

"Thanks," Mac says, and manages to find a smile again. "You were always a real stand-up kind of guy, Vadim."

Vadim slides him a shot, pours another for himself. "For old times."

"For old times," Mac echoes, and then they take their shots. It's unexpectedly smooth going down: vodka, and not the cheap stuff. Vadim must be feeling guilty.

Well, there are worse openings. "Hey, listen," he says. "I'm trying to find the home base for a pair of merc captains, by the name of Winlock and Barnes. Would you know anything about them?"

Vadim's look is entirely too perceptive. "Enough to know that they're Gunners, _tovarich,"_ he says. "You're a smart boy. Why would you want to get involved in that?"

_Good fucking question,_ he thinks, annoyed at his past self all over again. Well, live and learn, et fucking cetera. "Business reasons," he says. "Business enough that there's caps in it for you if you hear anything. Fair?"

"I don't stoop to gossip," Vadim sniffs. And then, when Mac just waits him out, he huffs out a sigh and swipes his rag across the bar. "But if I _do_ happen to hear this thing, I might be willing to share with old friend from south." He holds up a finger. "For old times, you understand."

"For old times," Mac repeats, grinning. He reaches into his pocket - _not_ the one with Sole's share - and puts a few caps on the bar, double the cost of a drink. "A cup of your sippin’ shine, Vadim. I'm gonna go grab a table."

The caps disappear with impressive alacrity. "Hope your boss is good for business like you," he says, pulling out an unmarked jug and starting to pour. Mac watches the clear liquid fill to a very respectable level in the glass before Vadim hands it back over.

"Always has been so far."

###### 

It’s an hour or so later when Mac hears a familiar pair of footsteps coming down the hallway from the front door. “Hello, pretty lady!” he hears Vadim boom companionably, and Mac smiles into his drink. “If you’re looking for best moonshine in the Commonwealth, you’ve come to the right place.”

“Well that sounds mighty tempting, but I’m actually looking for someone,” Sole’s unmistakable drawl comes back. “You seen a guy around, about yay tall, wearing a cap and a duster, answers to MacCready?”

“Never heard of him, my friend,” Vadim answers promptly, causing Mac to choke on his drink. “You must have wrong place. But if you want to get a drink before you go to find him-”

“It’s all right, Vadim,” Mac says, still laughing under his breath. He leans precariously far back in his chair so that he can see around the bar, to find Sole standing there, arms crossed over her chest in a way that only looks casual. “She’s with me.”

Sole gives Vadim a Look over the tops of her sunglasses, and Vadim shrugs, unashamed at having been caught out in a lie. “You could have told me your boss was pretty lady, _tovarich_ ,” he scolds. “How am I supposed to know if you do not tell me these things?”

Mac glances over at Sole, the giant line of stitches marching down her face, her motley collection of scars, the tightness of skin over too-big bones that speak of lean times. _Pretty?_ Not really a word he’d associate with the boss. Magnolia’s pretty. The reporter lady from yesterday, she’s pretty. His Lucy was pretty, with her round cheeks and her big dark eyes, the one face he knew as well as his own. The boss is just… the boss.

Sole glances from Vadim back to him, and her lips twitch. “Yeah, MacCready,” she says, her voice dry as the desert. “How was he supposed to know?”

“It’s just one of my many failings,” Mac sighs, but he’s grinning too. “C’mon, have a drink. His moonshine's been known to kill lesser men, but that shouldn't be a problem for you.”

Her lip curls up into a cocky smirk. “You buyin’?”

_Walked right into that one._ “Well, by now it’s probably my turn.”

“Then sure, what the hell.” She pulls off her cap and yanks out her hair tie as she starts ambling over, shoving both into her pocket and running a hand through her hair. It comes down like a glossy red waterfall across her shoulders, shiny and clean from her illicit shower yesterday, and Mac is briefly stunned by how _much_ of it there is. He’s used to seeing it up in its usual ponytail, most often half-hidden under her cap, and he forgot how long it actually is, past her shoulders and already starting to curl. He can’t even see the places where it’s shaved, down like that, and it softens her face, makes her look _young._ Young enough that he gets just the barest glimpse of what she must have looked like once upon a time, before she ran headfirst into the wastes, got chewed on and did some chewing of her own back.

“You see, this is what I’m talking about!” Vadim says from behind the bar. “Look at you, pretty like a sunrise. Listen, why don’t you leave this boy and come have a drink with me, eh? I promise, _much_ better company.”

“That’s real sweet, mister-” Sole says, only to be cut off when Vadim says firmly, “It is ‘Vadim’ to pretty ladies, not mister. I can show you a great time!”

There’s a moment when Mac is a little worried she’s going to pull a gun on him for being pushy, but instead she just shoves her sunglasses up onto the top of her head to reveal eyes crinkled up in a smile. “You know, I believe that,” she says, half-laughing. “Maybe I’ll take you up on it another time. MacCready and I have business to discuss.”

“Ah, say no more.” Vadim gives them both a wink. “One round coming up. You just tell me when you get dry, Vadim will take care of you.”

He wanders off to wipe down the other end of the bar, and Sole flips the chair on the other side of his table and straddles it, resting her crossed arms on the back. She gives him a raised eyebrow. “I didn’t know you had friends in this part of town.”

“Face it, you didn’t believe I had friends anywhere,” he retorts, and she tips her head in a shrug of acknowledgement.

“Yeah, fair enough. He come up from the Capital too?”

“Yeah, years before me though. He knew me when I was-” _Married,_ he almost says, and bites it back at the last minute. “Different.”

She opens her mouth and then closes it, looking rueful. “I was going to say I have a few of those, but I suppose I don’t anymore.”

Mac’s not sure what he’s going to say to that - _what happened,_ maybe, or just _sorry -_ but Scarlett comes by and drops off their drinks before he gets a chance to figure it out. Sole picks hers up and takes a cautious sip… and then a bigger one, a smile coming back to her face.

“Vadim, you’re a genius!” she calls, and Vadim gives her a small salute in acknowledgement.

“You see what I tell you!”

“You have good friends,” Sole tells him, and Mac just leans back in his chair and looks at her.

“A couple.”

The two of them order lunch from Scarlett and tuck in as soon as it shows up - just a couple of sandwiches with some vegetable hash on the side, nothing fancy but very filling. They’re quiet during the meal, both of them being the sort to prioritize food over just about everything else when it’s in front of them, but when the plates are cleared and Sole lights them both up a cigarette without showing any signs of being ready to talk business, he starts to get a little antsy.

“How’d your meeting go with Valentine?” he asks, when he absolutely can’t stand the silence anymore.

He immediately regrets his choice of conversation openers when a shadow falls across her face, and she comes back down from her easy backwards lean, her chair thumping down onto four legs. _Fuck._ He just had to go and remind her of personal shit, which is probably the last thing she wants to think about right now. _MacCready, you fuckup._

The upset fades away a moment later, though, gone like it was never there, leaving her usual still calm in its place. “He’s looking into some leads for me,” she says. “He said it’ll probably take a couple weeks. He knows how to get ahold of me now, when he finds something.”

“Good,” he says inanely, and takes a drag on his cigarette to keep from saying anything else stupid.

She looks down at the table, drums her fingers restlessly on the surface and then flattens her hand. “Yeah. It’s something.”

Silence falls again, and this time the tension builds much faster, till he’s almost squirming in his chair from it. The boss, by contrast, seems entirely relaxed, staring off into empty space, smoking her cigarette slowly and with evident enjoyment. Meanwhile, Mac finishes his in another couple huge drags and stubs it out, and finds himself with nothing left for his hands to do. Eventually he flattens them on the table to keep from fidgeting, glancing over at her every once in a while and then looking away again before she can catch him.

_Fuck, she’d make a good interrogator._

Finally, he can’t take it anymore. “So, Boss, look, I was thinking-”

“Do you want to keep working together?”

Hearing the question he was about to ask come out of her mouth leaves him struck momentarily dumb, and he just gapes across the table at her. She looks over at him and then glances away fast, takes a final drag of her cigarette and stubs it out.

“I know you said a couple weeks when this got started,” she says quietly. He can barely hear her over the noise from some of Vadim’s rowdier customers, on the other side of the bar and playing a very raucous game of pool. “And I know you’ve got business of your own to deal with. I don’t know what’s going on with you and the Gunners and I’m not gonna ask, but it didn’t look friendly, so if you’ve gotta leave and deal with that, I understand. It’s fine.”

“I-” he says, but she steamrolls on, like the words have been bottling up and she’s determined to get them out. She hasn’t been relaxed for the last ten minutes, he realizes abruptly. She hasn’t been relaxed at all.

“But if you’re good for few weeks, maybe even a month or two if you can swing it, I could use the help. Full split, same deal as before. I’ll, uh, I’ll even cover all the supply. If that makes a difference.”

“Boss,” he says, helplessly.

She looks directly at him for the first time since they finished lunch, and he sees desperation or something like it on her narrow, clever face. “I’m used to working on my own.” Her voice is low and rough; it'd almost sound emotionless, if he didn’t know better. “It’s what I do. I’ve done it so long I forgot what it was like to have someone watch my back.”

It’s like a punch to the gut, how exactly it mimics what he feels, and he swallows hard against it. “Yeah,” he says, hoarsely. “I know what you mean.”

“So if you’ve got other business and you need to split, I get it,” she says, steady now, inexorable. “I’ll be fine on my own. Always am. But if you’ve got the time-”

“Yeah,” he blurts, too-fast and awkward with it. “Yeah, I could-” He stops. Shoves his hands back in his pockets. “Yeah.”

She gives a slow blink and a smile starts to form. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he says, and curls his shaking hands into fists. _Fuck._ “I’ve got the time. You’re right, I’ll have to do something about the Gunners eventually, but until then. Yeah. I’ll keep working with you.”

Her smile, when it arrives on her face, is stunning. Mac thought he’d seen her smile plenty of times before, even got her to laugh a few times, but this is something else altogether. It’s like the goddamn sun coming out. He blinks in the face of it, momentarily blinded.

“That’s the best fucking news I’ve heard all day,” she says. “You think you’d be good to leave tomorrow? We can stick around for another couple days if you’ve got shit to do.”

“Nah, finished up my business earlier,” he says, a little faintly. Maybe it's the force of her personality, or maybe just how fucking _grateful_ he is that he's not going to be left on his own again, but for a moment even her rawboned, scuffed-up face looks… pretty. “I’m good for tomorrow. Not really looking to stick around here much longer, anyway.”

“Yeah, give me Goodneighbor any day,” she says. The tension he’s only now noticing is slowly leeching out of her, leaving her with her usual boneless sprawl in the chair, like a cat trying to take up as much space as possible. “Or the open road. It’s got a lot less people on it.”

He can’t help but grin back at her. “Just you, me, and the bad guys, Boss.”

“I’ll fuckin’ drink to that,” she says. “Vadim! We’re gettin’ dry over here.”

Vadim is over with a couple of pint glasses so quickly that he had to have had them ready and waiting. “Only the best for pretty lady,” he says, grinning conspiratorially. “You and Robert get your business settled?”

“We did indeed,” Sole says. Vadim sets the glasses down on the table and she peers into them. “Beer?”

“ _No one_ has second glass of my moonshine,” Vadim says, shaking his head. “Is too much for the strongest of men.”

“I’m going to take you up on that challenge sometimes,” she tells him, and he shakes his head at her mournfully, gives Mac a wink, and heads back to his bar. Sole lifts her glass.

“To business.”

“And to the road,” he says, and clinks his glass to hers. They both drink deeply, and when she sets her half-full glass back down her smile has faded back to the easy smirk that he’s gotten used to over the last few weeks. It’s surprisingly comforting.

“So, Boss, where we headed next?”

She pulls another couple cigarettes out of the pack - they’re running out fast - and offers one to him, which he takes with alacrity, glad of something to occupy his hands. Relief is making him feel loose and watery, the constant thrum of his heart reminding him that he’s not going to be left on his own after all.

_Thank God,_ is all he can think, _thank fucking God._

“Figure after lunch we’ll hit the stalls one last time, get the supplies we need for the road,” she says, exhaling smoke in a steady, practiced plume. Even this early in the day, a blue haze is starting to form in the bar, and her smoke just drifts up to mingle with the rest. “There’s a decent number of settlements in the area, and the Minutemen badge means it’s pretty easy to find a place for the night, but we’re still going to need stimpacks, food, water, stuff that won’t get us rad-sick. It’ll be a while before we’ll be in range of doctor again.”

“Guess that means you better work a little harder to keep your face in one piece, Boss.”

She rubs ruefully at the curve of her jaw, a little below the line of stitches. The area is pinking up a bit, but it looks clean and dry and healing fast. “Yeah, I’ll see what I can do. You’re probably going to have to help me pull these, you know.”

He shrugs. “I, uh, knew a doctor, once. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Well, you just get more useful by the day, don’t you, MacCready.”

Her tone is sort of reflexively sarcastic, but he can tell that she means it. That traitorous warmth forms up in the pit of his belly again, familiar now after weeks of work. He may not know what to do with an honest compliment, but hell if he doesn’t want them anyway. Especially from her.

“I do my best,” he drawls, and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t do it just to earn the smirk she gives him in return.

“I told you I’d take care of supply, but it might be faster if we split up. You still got my share from earlier, right? Think that’ll cover it?”

“Yeah,” he says, his hand going involuntarily to the front pocket where he put her caps. “And then some.”

“Keep the rest,” she instructs, like it’s no big deal. “Easier if we’re both carrying some caps - bribe money, traders, what the fuck ever. Don’t want to keep all our eggs in one basket.”

“Sure thing,” he says, a little distantly, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

“All right, let’s get ourselves a shopping list. I want us packed and out by dawn, if we can help it, so let’s get this shit done tonight.”

“Roger that,” he says, and watches her hands as she pulls out a notebook and pencil, starts writing in a fast, even hand. Trusts him at her back, trusts him for the road, even trusts him enough with her caps. He can’t remember the last time he could say that about someone. Probably not since his wife - and she never did figure out what he was. “Just tell me what you need.”

###### 

After lunch, they head back into the markets one final time, both of them a little unsteady on their pins from the moonshine and the beer, but solid enough. As promised, they split up - divide and conquer, she called it, with a little laugh - and hit up all the usual spots, getting food and water, meds and chems, getting their gear back into shape after a few weeks of hard use and making sure that they’re ready for travel. Mac finally remembers to pick up a sweater, the only one in his size that’s not dyed bright enough to make him a target out in the woods, and though he can’t find a scarf to save his damn life, he does pick up a length of heavy green cotton from one of the tailors that’s not quite enough to make into anything and wraps it around his neck. He doesn’t have any luck with a spare shirt, but- eh. He’s at least got enough to keep warm, and it’s not like he needs the extra weight in his pack. Maybe they’ll come across a caravanner that’s got something he can use.

Sole warned him that she’d be having dinner with Piper and bunking there for the night, so he doesn’t look for her when he goes back to the Dugout at dusk. He stows all his gear in his room and has a leisurely dinner in the bar, shooting the shit with Vadim and a couple of the local mercs, and then retires early despite much ribbing. He’s not going to start the first day with the boss on the wrong foot, not like last time. She said dawn, and he knows he’d damn well better not be late.

Yefim stops him when he goes to the back. “Runner came in a couple hours ago with a package for you,” he says. “I put it in with your stuff.”

“...Thanks,” Mac says, puzzled, and heads back to his room. Who the hell would be sending him stuff? Aside from the boss and Vadim, who even knows he’s here?

There’s no note with the package, but when he pokes it cautiously, it proves to be squishy and lacking any of the sharp edges or wiring that might indicate weapons or explosives, so he peels back the plain brown wrapping cautiously. Inside is a shirt: dark brown and made of fine-woven, heavy linen, much nicer than anything he’s ever owned. Someone’s stitched _FB_ in the place where the tag goes, which means that he’s holding the equivalent of a fully modded semi-auto in his hands, because that place isn’t fucking cheap.

He pulls it out of the packaging and holds it up against himself. Perfect size, of course.

Something falls to the mattress when he does, and he looks down to find a pair of sunglasses, twin to the ones he gave back to the boss the other day. He laughs and slides them into his pocket, shaking his head. Fucking hell, of course she remembered. High out of her mind and sliced to shit, but she remembered. He doesn’t even know why he’s surprised.

The next morning, he’s waiting at the front gate when she comes striding up. There’s only the barest hint of pre-dawn light staining a blush across the dark sky, barely enough to see by, but even so he catches the quick flick of her gaze down to his throat, where the collar of his shirt peeks out above his scarf. And then down to his chest, where the sunglasses are sticking out of the front pocket of his coat.

She looks back up to his face and finds him watching her, and clears her throat. “You ready to go?” she says gruffly, her voice still a little hoarse from sleep.

“You just lead the way, Boss, and I’ll follow.”

She puts out her hand and gives his shoulder a rough, wordless squeeze, then brushes past him and heads out, nodding to the gate guard. Mac smiles and falls in step, off to the side and just a half-pace behind, his rifle slung into his arms.

If he’s a little too glad that she’s not leaving him behind, well. At least he can be sure that she’s pretty fucking glad to have him here, too. Not a bad start.


	4. Chapter 4

He expects her to head across the river immediately, since rumor pegs most of the settlements affiliated with the Minutemen to be up to the north and west, but instead she skirts the bridges and heads due west along the river’s edge, avoiding the city streets and their many ambush points as much as possible. Still, it's a hard day's hike, and he's so tired he can barely see straight by the time they stumble into Oberland Station a couple hours after dark. A heavy fog rolled in around three that afternoon and never quite left, so it’s hard enough to see that the boss resorted to using her Pip-boy like a flashlight, and he just trudges along at her heels. She’ll lead them straight, or she won’t, but either way he can’t do much to help the situation. It’s not like _he_ knows where the fuck they’re going.

In fact, he’s so busy watching the little green-lit eddies of fog that kick up around the toes of his boots that he almost doesn’t notice when the boss comes to a halt, and only avoids plowing into her back by virtue of his quick reflexes. He blinks dazedly over her shoulder, to see a tall building rising up out of the fog, a lamplight burning in one of the windows. Off in the distance, he hears a brahmin moo.

“Ahoy the house!” Sole calls, and there’s a little flurry of commotion in the window, and then a woman with a shotgun in her hands steps out the door. Mac can just make out the outline of a man (or very broad-shouldered woman) with a rifle aimed out one of the upper windows.

“Step forward, slowly, and put your hands in the air,” the woman with the shotgun says. “Or get out. We don’t want any trouble.”

Sole doesn’t move. “That any way to greet someone who killed a bunch of raiders for you last month?”

“General?” There’s another little flurry of movement, and then the woman lowers her shotgun. “That you?”

“In the flesh,” Sole says. “Sorry I couldn’t report back in person any earlier. It’s been a busy few weeks.”

“Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me,” the woman says dryly. “It’s fine, we got word through the radio. Come in, come in, let’s get you off your feet and get some food in you. You must be famished!”

“Not so much hungry as tired,” Sole says, moving forward, and Mac nods in agreement even though they haven’t anything but some cold jerky around noon. “If you’ve got somewhere we can drop our bedrolls, we’ll be happier than a pig in shit.”

The woman gives her a confused look for that bit of idiom, but the meaning translates well enough, because she ushers them in and leads them to a storage room in the back that's walled with high shelves that go almost all the way up to the very high ceiling. Mac cranes his head back and looks up, sees windows up near the top and a little shelf under them just big enough for someone with a gun to stand on, if need be. _Clever,_ he thinks.

Most important, though, is the relatively clear space in the middle. “It’s not much,” their host apologizes, hauling a stray grain sack out of the way. “We don’t exactly get much company this way, so the guest room is full of canning equipment still.”

Mac finds a smile to give to her, since she’s so clearly bothered about it. “It’s plenty, missus,” he tells her. “It’s warm, dry, and nobody’s shooting at us, which makes it a vast improvement over our other options.”

She smiles back, a bit tentatively. “Good to hear, mister…?”

“MacCready,” he says. He remembers his manners enough to hold out a hand, which she shakes in a surprisingly firm grip. “Nice to meet you.”

“It’s Mary,” she says. “Are you with the Minutemen, or-?”

“Yep,” Sole says, before he can respond. “He’s one of mine. Listen, love, is it okay if I give you the report in the morning?” Her slow smile comes up, a little creaky but still pretty fucking charming, judging by the flustered smile Mary gives in return. Mac watches with interest. He always enjoys watching the boss happen to other people. “Say, over breakfast? We’ve got the caps for it.”

“Not counting what we already owe you,” Mary says dryly. “Yeah, of course. Get some sleep. Ginger will wake you when the food’s ready.”

“You’re a doll,” Sole tells her, with all evident sincerity, and drops her pack as soon as Mary shuts the door behind her. “Holy Mary, mother of God, I thought we’d never fucking make it.”

Part of him, a small, petty part, is just glad that she’s apparently feeling it as bad as he is. He was starting to wonder if he was getting out of shape, with how hard it was to keep up the last few miles. He hasn’t done as much travelling as she has the last couple months, but he didn’t think he was that bad off, either. “Just tell me we don’t have to keep watch tonight.”

“Fuck, no,” she says, looking appalled at the very notion. “Sleep. Sleep until food. We can figure out our next step then.”

“You have good plans.”

Without discussing it, they drop their bedrolls next to each other, head-to-toe. There’s not much room to do anything else, but if Sole’s bugged by sharing such close quarters she doesn’t show it, only bothering to pull off her boots before she crawls in, cocoons herself, and apparently drops immediately to sleep. It takes him a little longer to go down - even now, it's still strange to sleep with someone so close by - but considering how exhausted he is, it doesn't take long.

When he wakes up the sun is streaming through the windows, and he and Sole have gravitated towards each other in sleep. He has his cheek pillowed on one blanket-covered calf, and when he carefully sits up and twists around to look down at his own feet, her pillow has migrated sideways until her head is tucked carefully behind the curve of his knees. It's almost impressive, the way she's got herself twisted up. It can't be comfortable, not to mention the way she's basically face-first with his ass.

"Hope you enjoyed the view," he mutters under his breath, and sets about extricating himself from the blankets.

She wakes up before he's halfway out, and sits straight up, hand going to her hip where he knows she keeps her spare knife, blinking owlishly. "Mornin', sunshine," Mac says, feeling ridiculously fond. She didn't even bother to take out her hair tie last night, and now little eddies of staticky hair are sticking out every which way.

She scrubs her hands over her face. "Time?"

He tilts his bare wrist ironically. "Dunno. Mary didn't come to wake us yet though. And-" He cranes his head. "I think I can hear someone cooking."

She blinks slowly, still coming out of her stupor, but he can see the intelligence filtering back into her eyes. "Slept yourself out?”

“Something like that.” He wriggles the rest of the way free of his bedroll, a lot faster now that he doesn’t have to worry about kicking her in the head, and runs a hand over his face. Damn, he really has to shave soon. No wonder some of the shopkeepers didn’t want to bargain with him; he probably looks like the worst sort of scavver. “We moving out today, or here for another night?”

“Not sure yet. Depends on my marching orders. We’ll know pretty soon after breakfast. Why?”

But he’s momentarily distracted by her phrasing. “‘Marching orders?’” he quotes, arching one eyebrow. “I thought you were the General.”

“And like every military ever, it’s the XO who actually runs the joint.” She gets free of her bedroll with a happy wriggle and rolls to her feet, stretching luxuriously. “And _unlike_ every military ever, the officer actually gets shit done. That was the deal, when I took this gig. I’m not cut out to make decisions for people.”

“You seem fine making them for me.”

“Eh.” She pulls her hair out of its tie and flips it forward, scratching her fingers vigorously in her scalp before flipping back up and then pulling it back tight. When she’s done it doesn’t really look any more tidy than before, but at least it’s not trying to escape to the heavens anymore. Once she shoves her cap on top, she looks pretty much the same as she always does. “You’re different.”

A knock on the doorframe interrupts them before he can figure out what he wants to say in response to that, and Mac looks up to see an unfamiliar dark-skinned woman standing there. Her curly hair is clipped close to her scalp with just a hint of gray creeping in at the temples, and she damn near fills up the doorway, six feet tall and with a frame any raider would envy. Blacksmith shoulders, if he’s any judge. Farming’s hard work, but it doesn’t put on that kind of muscle.

“Mornin’,” she says, her voice husky with either sleep or disuse. “I’m Ginger. Mary sent me to say there’s breakfast.”

“My favorite word,” Sole says, and the woman laughs unexpectedly, lighting up her lined, serious face with good humor.

“Thought your favorite was ‘dinner,’ General.”

“Sometimes ‘lunch.’ You can sense the theme.”

“Well, there’s plenty. Come eat.”

Ginger turns and walks away without any further pleasantries, and Sole tips him a friendly shrug and follows hard on her heels. It’s an invitation Mac isn’t inclined to ignore, so he trails after her down the hall, lets himself be pointed into a chair at the sunny kitchen table and falls to when Mary starts putting plates in front of him.

After he has eaten entirely more pancakes than any man has a right to, he lounges back in his chair and contemplates returning to the store room for a bit more sleep, but Sole bounds up and grabs her jacket, buckles her holsters on over it. Mac eyes her with deep disfavor.

“You gotta be kidding.”

“We’re not going far,” she says, but she’s twinkling. “Mile at most. C’mon, get up.”

“You’re a cruel woman.”

“You knew that going in.” She drubs her knuckles over the top of his head in passing. “Up!”

“Ugh,” he says, but some of the bellyache is fading and his scalp is tingling pleasantly, so he gets out of his chair and detours through the storeroom to grab his gear. He has to jog to catch up with her, which doesn’t win her any points in his book, but she slows down when she hears him coming and they fall into step as they reach the railroad tracks. She pulls left and they hike down the line in easy silence, the shift of gravel under the boots and the shivering sigh of empty branches in the wind the only sounds to keep them company.

Eventually he sees the outline of a radio tower rising up above the treeline, and he realizes what they’re after. “I thought you could pick up the Minutemen signal from anywhere.” He’s heard her checking it, occasionally, tuning in for an hour or two at a time almost every day.

“Sure can. For all-points, or a general distress call, shit like that goes on the open line. If I can’t get to it, one of the others will, and report back, and the Castle’ll sound the all-clear. But there’s also an encrypted line, for work they have for me where we don’t want raiders or whoever the fuck listening in.”

“Fancy,” he says, and she snorts.

“Maybe if you’ve got lax standards.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks, but she holds up a hand for silence and he complies, rifle ready in his hands.

They draw up to the tower, which the boss carefully circles before she actually goes through the gate. “Got ambushed by a mongrel pack here, once,” she explains, crouching to pry the front panel off a control box near the bottom. “Learned my lesson there. Keep an eye out, would you?”

“Sure thing.” He swings his rifle up to his shoulder, puts his back to the tower and waits, listening to the sound of her fidgeting with the wiring. “So what was that, about lax standards?”

“Ah, just me being an asshole.” Her voice is muffled, and experience tells him it’s because she’s got a screwdriver in her mouth. “It’s a pretty sweet setup, really. Just weird to think about.”

“How’s that?”

There’s a grunt from under the tower. “It didn’t used to be fancy, you know? Before the war everyone talked like that. Telephones, satellite, whatever. Real-time connection.”

“Oh yeah?” he asks, amused. “And how’d you know that?”

A pause. “It’s called an education, MacCready. You should try it sometime.”

His education in Lamplight was better than most wasters ever get, not that he’s going to tell her that. He’s got the feeling she’d just use it to make fun of him. “I can read, write, and count caps. What the heck else do you want from me?”

There’s a scrape of gravel as she shifts, probably trying for a better angle. “This is what’s wrong with your generation.”

He snorts. “Oh yeah, because you’re ancient. How old are you, exactly, Boss?”

“Uh. Twenty-eight. Give or take some… months.”

“Oh yeah? Lost track of time?”

She gives a little bark of laughter. “Something like that. Spent some time underground for a while. Not my favorite, as I’ve mentioned.” She gives a little hiss of triumph, and then there’s a whine as something powers up. “Yes! Fuckin’ knew I didn’t forget how to do that.”

Mac doesn’t turn around, though he wants to very badly. “All good, Boss?”

“Yeah, c’mere.” He obeys with alacrity, and finds her sitting cross-legged on the ground in front of the radio tower, a plug extruding out from the side of her Pip-boy and stuck into a jury-rigged nest of copper wiring. He eyes it with disfavor.

“Are you sure that’s safe?”

“Yeah, ‘course,” she says dismissively, and then pauses and gives it another glance. “...Relatively,” she amends. “Look, I gotta descramble the signal somehow. This is just the fastest way.”

“Right.” It still doesn’t look safe to him, but then he’s not the one with his arm attached to it. “So where’s the signal?”

“Hold your fuckin’ horses, Jesus. Coming through now.”

There’s a pop and a hiss, and then a moment later a voice breaks through on her Pip-boy, mid sentence. “-message for the General. We have a request for help from Greentop Nursery, at the following coordinates.” Whoever it is rattles off a string of numbers, and the boss curses and fumbles for her Pip-boy. “The nature of this request is unknown right now, but a caravan was lost on the road near there, so it’s probably dangerous. There’s also a farm near there called County Crossing, so if you can get the chance to approach them and see if they’d be willing to join, do so. Please send word with a caravan when you receive this message. Preston Garvey, signing off.” There’s a pause, and then the message starts again. “This is Preston Garvey, of the Commonwealth Minutemen, with a confidential message for the General. We have a request for help from Greentop Nursery…”

Sole lets it play through another couple times, to make sure that she’s got the coordinates punched in correctly, and then she cuts the feed. “Well, we’ve got our marching orders,” she sighs, and holds up her wrist for him to see. “It’s balls on the other side of Boston, though. Wish he could have been a little quicker getting the word out, could have spared ourselves a hike.”

"Can't always work out, Boss," Mac says, with the comfortable certainty of someone who's expected nothing less. First rule of the road: wherever you need to go, it's always the farthest, most annoying place to get. Fact.

"Mrr. Maybe." She gives another annoyed click of a sigh and stares at the Pip-boy like it's personally offended her. "Well, I was hoping that we could stay another night here, maybe stock up, but I think we're going to have to head out. We've got a place right across the river we can kip tonight and get some supplies, and then the northern road shouldn't be too far. We should be able to grab onto a caravan for at least part of the way."

There are upsides and downsides to caravan travel. Slower, usually, but there's safety in numbers, too. "Sounds like a plan, Boss. Want to head back now and get our stuff?"

"Probably should." She pulls out her screwdriver again, and starts pulling copper wires with fast, practiced hands. Mac watches with no small amount of trepidation, but she doesn’t seem to shock herself on any of the loose ends. When she’s done, she coils the wires neatly back into the casing and closes it up with a few quick twists of her screwdriver, then puts away the plug to her Pip-boy back in its housing. “I’m sorry we’re not gonna get a chance to scrub up before we go, though. I should’ve gotten a haircut while we were in Diamond City.” She rubs a rueful hand over the soft stubble on the side of her head. “I’m getting pretty fuzzy.”

“Tell me about it,” he says, mimicking her gesture along his jaw, making her laugh as she climbs to her feet. “Well, maybe we’ll get a chance down the road.”

“Assuming the traders don’t think we’re nothing but a pair of down-and-out scavvers and pass us by,” she shoots back, and rolls fluidly to her feet with a crunch of gravel. “Ah well, too late to do anything about it now. We’ll just have to take our chances and hope for the best.”

“Boss,” he says solemnly, putting a hand to her shoulder as she passes him. She goes still, giving him a startled, expectant glance. “That’s my motto.”

She gives a startled crack of laughter and fakes a punch at the side of his head, grinning when he ducks away. “ _Such_ an asshole,” she says, but fondly. “C’mon then, smartass, let’s get a move on. We’re burning daylight here.”

###### 

They say their goodbyes to Mary and Ginger, and roll out that afternoon after a quick, light lunch. The next settlement isn’t far away, about ten miles off down the river, but it takes them a few hours to get there, since they have to backtrack a ways down the river’s edge to final a spot low enough for them to ford without getting rad-sick. They’ve both got a solid stock of Rad-X pills and flush shots, but neither of them is willing to use them for something so frivolous as cutting off a couple hours from a trip. Better to save that for ghoul attacks, or infected meat, or the inevitable barrel of waste into the only water source around… You know. The usual things.

So it’s once again coming up on dark when they make their way up the hill to the settlement, a place she calls Greygarden. The first he sees of it is when he’s damn near blinded by the setting sun reflecting off a crapload of glass right into his eyes, which is not his nicest introduction to a place ever. But he shoves the shades she gave him over his eyes and takes another look, and finds himself staring at a giant fucking enclosed garden, made entirely of glass. Roof and walls, the whole nine yards.

“Holy- crap,” he says, lamely, staring at it. “Is that what I think it is?”

“If you think it’s a prewar greenhouse, then you are entirely correct,” Sole says, picking up her stride a little. “They mostly grow mutfruit here, but they’ve got enough corn growing that we should be able to get some cornmeal for the road.”

“Man, how the heck is that even still standing?” Mac wonders, hard on her heels. “I would’ve thought someone would’ve scrapped it for parts _long_ ago.”

“The settlers can take care of their own,” she says, with a secretive little smile that doesn’t make much sense until they get a little closer and Mac can see movement in the greenhouse, a something white and pale bobbing around through the branches, almost like-

“Are those _robots?_ ”

“Welcome to the Commonwealth’s only farm run by Mr. Handys,” she says, looking amused. “They’re no Mr. Gutsy, but you can guess how they’d be a hard target for raiders to hit.”

He eyes the little saw blades on their arms with disfavor. “Just a bit,” he mutters. “Are we sleeping here? Because they’re creepy.”

“My friend, it is time to broaden your horizons,” she says, and claps him on the back. “C’mon, I’ll introduce you.”

It’s hard to be entirely intimidated by a robot that likes to talk like it’s on a gameshow, or one that keeps calling him _dahling_ in a purring voice. Still, when the boss finishes dickering for some supplies and they bed down for the night, head-to-toe again in some little out-of-the-way corner of the greenhouse, he can’t entirely adjust to the strangeness of it: the little clicks and whirrs and hisses as they move ceaselessly through the rows, trimming and tending and tucking and doing God-knows-what to the mutfruit bushes. “Don’t they ever shut down?” he mutters to Sole, who laughs sleepily and shoves at his shoulder with her foot.

“It’s not like they need to sleep, you know.”

“That’s not making me feel any better, Boss.”

He can almost hear her smiling in the dark. “It means we don’t have to set watch tonight. I figured you’d be grateful for the extra sleep.”

“You know me, Boss, I can find the dark cloud for every silver lining.” He rolls over onto his side, bumping his knees against hers where they intersect at the middle of their bedrolls. “How’d you end up with a bunch of robots under the Minutemen banner, anyway? Like you said, it doesn’t seem like they’d have problems with raiders.”

“Mirelurk nest in the water treatment plant down the river,” she says. Her voice is a low, tired murmur down somewhere near his ankles, blurred and hoarse with oncoming sleep. “Apparently the sewage backup was messing with their plants, I don’t know. I cleaned the place out, got it drained and got the water flowing again. I guess they figured us fleshy ones had something to offer after all.”

Every time he thinks he might be getting closer to figuring her out, she does something to throw him for a loop all over again. He wonders if he’ll ever have a chance to learn her properly, the way you knew everybody back in Little Lamplight, when nobody had any secrets and everybody was in everybody’s business. He wonders if he’ll even be around long enough to try.

“You’re just a basket of surprises, Boss.”

“I try not to disappoint.”

###### 

They head out at first blush of dawn the next morning, well before the idea of food can cross either of their minds, reaching the northern road in less than an hour and then striking out parallel, close enough to road to find a caravan if they stumble on it but far enough away then any roving raiders won’t spot them first. After a while their stomachs start rumbling, so she gets some jerky out of her pack and they have breakfast as they walk, sipping water from their canteens and taking turns walking point with weapons drawn so the other has time to eat.

It’s their first _proper_ day on the road, out from the shadow of the city and the nests of raiders and worse that like to pop out from every corner, and Mac stretches his legs and settles into it: the easy, inexorable rhythm of travel, the pad of their boots on soft earth and the sigh of the bare trees above them, even the bitter bite of the December wind. He pulls his hat down and his coat collar up, tucks his scarf tighter around his neck, and enjoys the clean winter smell of it, like fresh air and maybe a hint of rain on the horizon. No sickly smell of too many unwashed bodies pressed into a tight space, no urine-soaked sacks of garbage or vomit on the walls or drifters too poor for plumbing shitting in the gutters. Goodneighbor’s not a bad place to earn some caps, and it’s better than nothing when you have no place else to go, but this? This is so much better.

“You seem chipper today.”

He looks over to see the boss grinning at him, her hands shoved into her pockets. After breakfast it just seemed easier to keep taking turns walking point, and right now he’s the one with his rifle in his hands, doing sweeps with the scope every ten minutes or so to try and get ahead of anything that wants to jump out at them. “Open road and a loaded weapon? Doesn’t get much better than this.”

She laughs quietly. “Tell me if you’re still saying that when we have to stay up half the night on watch tonight.”

“Eh.” He shrugs. “That’s not too bad. Cold’s worse than the loss of sleep, anyway.”

“Is it?” she says. He shoots her another look, but she looks honestly curious. Now that he’s thinking about it, she’s not dressed so heavy as he is, either - her coat's better for keeping out the wet than the cold, and her shirt's worn thin with age and repeated washing. With her half-shaved head and what hair she has pulled back in a ponytail, she must be feeling a pretty solid draft on her neck, but if it’s bothering her, she doesn’t show it.

“Yeah, Boss, it’s fu- freezing out here.”

“I don’t, uh. Don't really feel the cold, much,” she says, and then hunches her shoulders against a gust of wind as if to give lie to her words. But once the wind is done she’s still a little curled up, a little smaller than her usual swagger, and he knows that it wasn’t the cold but something else. “Anymore, I mean.”

He doesn’t know what thought put that look on her face, still and distant, but he doesn’t like it one fucking bit. “Lucky you,” he grumbles, just to get her startled look and little huff of a laugh as she comes out of whatever memory pulled her down into a funk. “I’m gonna freeze my balls off tonight.”

“You can have first watch,” she offers. “It’s a lot colder later, after the fire dies down.”

“Seriously?” He wouldn’t have thought to ask - second watch is the dog’s watch, and with her being the boss he’d just assumed he’d get the scut job. It’s just the way things go.

“Seriously,” she says, with a tiny twitch of a smile. “I don’t mind it. I like being up before the rest of the world. It’s peaceful.”

It’s probably one of the most personal things she’s ever said to him. “I like staying up,” he finds himself volunteering. “At- uh, a place I used to crash, when I was younger.” Odds are good she hasn’t heard of Little Lamplight, but why take chances? “I used to wait till everyone else went to bed and go on- patrol, I guess, though I didn’t think of it like that at the time. Just made the rounds, checked all the entry points, make sure everything was secure. I guess I never really got out of the habit.” He clears his throat, suddenly aware of the silence between them. “Probably kind of weird.”

A pause. “There are worse habits to have,” she says dryly. “Psycho can fuck you up pretty bad, for one. I know a guy who’s got a jones for Nuka Cola, that’s pretty fucking weird-”

She breaks off, chuckling, when he shoves at her shoulder. “I’m just saying!” she says, fending him off with a fast (and armored) elbow. “It could be worse!”

“You’re kind of a jerk, you know that Boss?”

“Well,” she says, and he can hear the smile in her voice as she passes him, pulling out her rifle and falling into point. “You don’t seem to mind too much.”

“I’m a very good liar,” he says, and startles her into laughter again, a snorting, ungainly sort of laugh that brings a huge grin helplessly to his face.

“At this point, pal, I’ll take what I can get.”

###### 

They don’t run into anyone that day, caravans or otherwise, but the boss doesn’t seem to mind much. Mac doesn’t, either. If he was once worried that he and Sole would drive each other crazy on the road, that worry is long since gone. They spend most of the day in companionable silence, occasionally trading jokes and insults and one-upping each other with combat stories with all the personal details carefully filed off, and it’s.... Well, it’s pretty fucking good, is what it is. When he was with the Gunners he had people watching his back, sure, but he couldn’t be sure that they wouldn’t take something the wrong way and shoot him for it, they were so fucking nuts. And after that he didn’t have anything, not one damn thing or person who’d give a shit if he died. Now he’s got the boss, and when he’s striding along at her heels, watching the cheerful red bob of her ponytail bouncing with her step, he thinks about the look on her face when she asked him to join her, the desperation and the _fierceness_ that shone in her green eyes at that thought of going back to being alone. The boss would care, if he were gone. The boss would care a whole fucking lot.

He’s still not sure what to do with that information. But he treasures it, in the quiet little place down in the bottom of his ribs, where he’ll be able to take it out and marvel at it in the quiet moments, when there’s no one there to witness. He can think about it later. Today, he can just be satisfied that for once in his _fucking_ life, something seems to be going right.

When the boss picks a campsite and they settle down for dinner, Mac finds himself twisting his shoulders back and forth, chasing a weird feeling across the back of his neck. “You afraid I stuck something on your back?” Sole asks, amused. She’s chopping up the wild carrots they stumbled across earlier with a fast, steady hand, and he’s butchering up the couple of squirrels she brought down that afternoon, elbow-to-elbow with her near the campfire. There’s not a lot of meat on a squirrel, but the boss shelled out for a couple of fancy portable purifiers for their canteens, and they’ve got enough from the nearby stream for a half-decent stew. He’s too hungry to get picky, anyway.

“What do you mean?”

“You keep- wriggling.” He starts to turn his head and then stops, and she makes a triumphant noise and points at him. (With her knife. He’s gonna choose not to take it personally.) “Yeah, like that! What’s up with that?”

Inwardly, he grimaces. He didn’t know that he was being obvious about it. “Dunno. Just- feels weird.”

“If you’ve got a strained muscle, I can heat up a rock and wrap it, see if that clears it up.”

“Thoughtful,” he says, in a voice that’s kind of reflexively sarcastic even though he kind of means it. It’s not a bad idea, but- “It doesn’t hurt or anything. Just- weird.”

“Huh,” she says, and shrugs. “Shit happens, I guess. Let me know if you’re having trouble.”

“Roger that.”

It’s not till later, when they’ve finished their meal and banked the fire and she’s out for the count, that he finally recognizes the weird feeling as - son of a _bitch_ \- nothing more or less than simple fucking _relaxation._ The reason his neck and shoulders feel so weird is because for the first time in longer than he cares to think about, he doesn’t have them tensed up against the next fuckawful thing. It’s been so damn long since he hasn’t had to watch for a knife in his back that he literally didn’t recognize what relaxation felt like.

_Shit, now I’m depressed,_ he thinks, but he isn’t really. Yeah, his life hasn’t been all flowers and candy the last few years, but what’s the point of fretting over it? He can’t change what happened to him, and sure as shit can’t change what he’s done. _The only way out is through,_ as some dead poet once said, and things are looking up now, besides. He has no idea how long the good times are gonna last, but you can’t think about that, either. That kind of worry will kill you sure as a bullet, if you let it. Mac doesn’t intend to let it.

He shifts a little closer to the fire and looks over at the boss, but she’s fast asleep, curled up tight in her bedroll. Before when he’d seen her do that he figured it was defense against the cold - which is goddamn ball-splitting, even this close to the fire, fuck - but now that he knows it doesn’t bother her, he wonders why she sleeps like that. Maybe it’s defensive, like she’s afraid someone will bother her in her sleep. Maybe she’s lonely.

Or maybe it’s just so she can get to her boot knife quicker, the fuck does he know. Resolutely, he turns his back on her and keeps his eyes on the perimeter instead, like he’s goddamn supposed to.

It’s getting a bit past midnight, if his guess is right, when he goes to wake her for her watch. She comes up fast and silent, none of the sleepy haze she has in the mornings when they’ve slept safe, and Mac doesn’t move his hand from her shoulder, though he kind of wants to. She holds perfectly still for a long second, then looks up into his eyes and nods once, wriggles out from the bedroll and shoves her feet into her boots.

“All quiet?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.” She picks up her rifle and slings it over her back. “You can take my bag, if you want,” she offers, when she sees him eyeing his own ice-cold bedroll with disfavor. “It’s warm.”

“Yeah?” says Mac, who isn’t about to pass up an offer like that, and when she nods, looking amused, he shucks his boots and dives under the blankets, his teeth chattering. She’s right, it _is_ warm, even after the disturbance of her getting up and exposing them to the open air. She must put out heat like a blast furnace. “Thanks, Boss.”

“No problem, MacCready,” she says, and gives him a quick, rough squeeze on his shoulder before she leverages herself to her feet and pads over to the stump near the fire. He lies awake for a few minutes while his extremities unfreeze enough to get blood flowing back in, but he drops off soon enough after that. The last thing he sees before he drifts off is Sole’s hazy, firelit figure, elbows on her knees and staring into the fire like it’s got all the answers in the world. Confident that she’ll watch his back, he lets himself go under, and doesn’t dream at all.


	5. Chapter 5

The next day doesn't show any sign of a caravan, either, but Mac doesn’t mind too much. He and the boss continue to get along just fine on their own, hunting and foraging for dinner along the way and splitting watch at night, and he finds he’s not too eager to join up with other people just yet. Other people, meaning _strangers,_ people that he doesn’t know and can’t trust. Teamsters tend have all the best gossip and he _needs_ that, but still. It’s simpler when it’s just the two of them.

He can't help but notice that she's taking the long way up and around to this settlement, too. He figured something was up on the first day, when she stuck to the main road instead of taking the turnoff towards Cambridge, but there's a baker's dozen of reasons someone might want to avoid a shortcut through those ruins. (Starting with 'extreme feral infestation' and ending with 'extreme feral infestation.') When the second day sees her sticking to the north road instead of turning off and going across the wastes, however, he figures that for all her grumbling about the distance of the trek, she's not exactly looking to shorten her trip, either.

No skin off his nose. It's more sensible to take the roadways where you can; he just figured her the type to choose speed over safety. He's not in any kind of hurry either way. Either they'll run into something they can scav before the week's out, or she'll pay him - either way, he'll build up a little more insurance against the Gunners, and a little more bribe money in case he gets the lead he's been looking for.

He's kinda hoping for the scav, though. Trading's the best way to pick up the word around town without being obvious about it, and it'll give them something to offer if they ever do hook up with a caravan. And there's something weird about the idea of taking her caps, not when she's already covering all the supply and getting him out of Goodneighbor, giving him a chance to get out into the Commonwealth so he can talk to people that might have an answer. He doesn't want to work for _free,_ either, 'cause fuck that, but- splitting up a haul is easier. Simpler.

But when she brings them into Lexington late that afternoon, Mac finds himself staring up at the face of the Super Duper Mart and thinking, _This is not exactly what I had in mind._

"You know that whole place is lousy with ferals," he feels obliged to point out, on some vain hope that maybe she hadn't realized and this is just an awkward misunderstanding and they can go now. The boss gives him a Look. "I'm just sayin'."

"I know it's full of ferals," she says patiently. "That's why we're here."

_That's what I was afraid of._ He eyes the entrance distrustfully. He can see a body lying just inside the big double doors, and while it's possible it's the remains of some poor schmuck who thought they were big enough and bad enough to clear the place, it's a lot more likely it's just a feral lying in wait. Either way, not exactly the best omen.

Ferals. It's goddamn Christmas Eve, and he's dealing with fucking ferals.

"Are you sure the scav in there is really going to be worth the trip?"

She shrugs. "It's not like it's exactly out of our way."

"Yeah, but-" He cuts his gaze sideways, sees her giving him a patient look over the tops of her shades. Shuts his mouth. "Got it, Boss."

For a minute she looks like she's going to let it pass, but then she scrubs a hand over her mouth and sighs. "Yeah, okay. Listen. We probably should have had this talk earlier, but we hadn't had any problems so far, so-"

His heart plummets down to somewhere around his toes. _It's none of your business, you goddamn idiot. You're just supposed to point your gun where she wants it, not tell her what she can and can't do._ "Uh, I didn't mean it like it sounded," he tries, but she just keeps going, sounding like she's giving a rehearsed speech.

"Look, if you've got concerns, I'd rather hear 'em than not," she says. He grits his teeth, waiting for the _on the other hand,_ but she just keeps going, about as gentle as the boss ever gets. "If you need to know _why_ in order to make a good call, then I've got no problems telling you." She rubs the back of her neck. "I wouldn't have you out here with me if I did."

_Aw, fuck._ He shoves his hands in his pockets and manages, if possible, to feel like even more of an ass. "Got it, Boss."

She hesitates, looking like maybe she's going to let it rest there, then sighs again and plows on. "And. Uh. If you don't want to do a particular job, I'm sure as shit not gonna make you. That's not my style. So if you want to sit this one out-"

"No!" he yelps, then grits his teeth as a blush that burns over his cheeks. That denial came out a little more vehement than strictly intended. The last thing he needs is to make her think like he's got some problem being left behind. Even if he kinda does.

_Especially_ if he kinda does.

"You sure?"

"I've got your back, Boss. Promise."

She grins and gives his shoulder a squeeze. "That wasn't in question. But thanks."

"Sure thing." He has to look away from her steady gaze. "So, what's the plan?"

###### 

The plan, as it turns out, is a variation on what's rapidly becoming their standard approach: snipe everything they can from a distance, and then the boss closes while he covers her back. It works pretty well in the main room of the supermarket, which is open enough that they have room to aim even if some of the spots between the shelves get a little dicey, but once they start working their way through the maze of storerooms in the back, Mac's rifle becomes worse than useless.

"Here, take this," the boss says, low-voiced, and unbuckles her Pip-boy. He can feel his eyebrows heading up towards his hairline, but he takes it from her when she passes it to him, straps it on. "There's a life-signs detector on the third screen- yeah, that one," she says, as he rapidly clicks through the pages to find the one she's looking for. "You're going to be my eyes, okay?"

"Sure thing," he says, then gives a muffled yelp as the Pip-boy suddenly squeezes down tight on his arm, a tiny pinprick of pain signalling that something just pierced his wrist. "What the hell?"

"Medical feedback, ignore it," she instructs. "Just keep an eye on the readout."

He brushes his sleeve over the screen, clearing away a sheen of dust that built up from the road. "Got it."

"Good." She leaves her rifle with her pack, pulls out her shotgun and waits for his nod. "Let's do this."

It takes them over an hour to finish clearing the building, but the boss doesn't falter once. Just takes it one room after another, pausing before each door for him to say "Two o'clock, back corner," or "ten o'clock, just inside" or "two along the back wall, straight ahead." She doesn't bother to double-check his directions, just kicks in the door and shoots, no hesitation. Not even when the big one comes through the window into the bathroom, takes two to the chest and keeps coming. Mac manages to fumble out his pistol, gets the muzzle up and drops three in the thing's skull just as its claws hit her shoulder, and she grits her teeth and clubs at it wildly with the butt of her gun. Red mist splatters the wall behind them, and they stand there, panting for a second, as the withered body slides slowly to the floor.

They both look at each other. She's holding her shoulder a little stiffly, but there's not much blood seeping through, so it can't be too deep. Still. That was close. That was way too fucking close.

"Stimpak?" she says, hopefully, and Mac lets out a slow breath, tries to calm his rabbiting heart rate.

_Ferals. Why's it always gotta be ferals._

"I think I can manage that."

It's not as simple as that, of course. They've got to do one final sweep of the back, and Sole won't let him take care of it, has to go with him just in case. And then they've got to find a safe spot to get her patched up, which ends up being in the back corner of the employee office with some old coffee machine or something looming over them from a nearby desk like some kinda squat red gargoyle. "Well that could have gone a lot worse," he tells her, dabbing the wound clean and trying not to tense up too bad with the machine at his back. What if it falls over? That thing looks fuckin' heavy. "You're lucky that thing didn't get you in the throat."

She twists her neck uneasily. "Yeah, I should probably get something to cover that. Even a good leather gorget would do the trick in a pinch."

"A what now?"

"Gorget? It's an armor piece made to cover the neck. Like those old suits of armor, you know-" She gestures vaguely towards her throat with her free hand, making a sort of circling gesture. "It goes around, like up to the chin?"

He stares blankly at the scratches on her shoulder, trying to picture it. "Aren't they usually metal?"

"Yeah! That. But in leather."

Another image pops into his head, and he winces. Probably he should keep his dumb mouth shut, but the idea of her actually following through and walking around like that- "Uh, Boss, I don't know if you're familiar with, uh, a certain type of dirty magazine…"

There's a little pause, and he winces down, but she just clears her throat and when he glances up, her eyebrows are drawn together in the way that means she's trying hard not to smile. "Yeah. Maybe not that, then."

He exhales quickly and bends back to bandaging her shoulder. "You know, I distinctly remember mentioning that you were supposed to avoid injury once we hit the road."

"I believe I said I promised to _try,_ " Sole says. She's surprisingly relaxed for someone who's getting a wound patched up, but this time around he's smarter with his field dressing, and made sure to dab an eighth-dose of the stimpak directly onto the cuts before he got started. Directly applied like that it can work as a numbing agent, and so she's just lying there, easy under his hands, apparently feeling no pain. Thank fuck. The cut's not actually too bad, nowhere near as bad as the one on her cheek. It probably won't even scar once he gets the rest of the stimpak into her. As long as they keep it clean, anyway; that's always the big worry when it comes to ferals. That and radiation poisoning, but he already got a Rad-X down her throat before the stuff could set in.

"That was trying?" he teases, a little belatedly.

But if she noticed that he missed his cue she doesn't give any sign, just makes makes a mock-offended noise and gives him a scowl that's a lot more playful than threatening. "Hey, I thought I did pretty well, considering the way the thing freakin' ambushed us."

The reminder sobers him. "Yeah, uh. About that."

She blinks up at him. "What?"

Aww, fuck, she's going to make him _say_ it. "Sorry I missed the life sign," he says, looking away. The wound's about as clean as it's going to get, and he keeps his hands busy on the stimpak, readies the dose and flicks the glass to settle the bubbles. Looking at his hands makes it easier to admit, "That one was on me."

Because he's looking away, he misses her moving until her hand's already on his arm. He glances up quick, but she's just giving him that patient look again. "Nah, it's not your fault," she says. She gives his forearm a squeeze. "Scanner doesn't always work great through heavy walls. Shit happens, pal. And hey, you got him down before he could get to my throat. That's some fast shooting."

_Not fast enough,_ he thinks, but it's pretty clear she doesn't see it that way. It probably didn't even occur to her that she got hurt because he fucked up until he pointed it out for her.

Or maybe she just doesn't care. Between this and her encounter with Swann, he's starting to get the feeling that she doesn't always have the highest regard for her personal safety. It's not reckless, exactly; she just weighs the cost a little lighter than she should. Well, at least now he knows. Working with someone for a time, it's all about learning their little quirks. Honestly, he was starting to get a little suspicious that she didn't seem to have any. At least this way he can compensate for it.

He slides the stimpak into her arm, feeds the dose into her vein. She gives a little shudder as the _stim_ part of the stimpak hits her, but otherwise doesn't react. "There you go. All better."

She flexes a couple times, the muscles standing out like steel cords in her wiry arm, then shrugs the rest of the way back into her tattered shirt and gives him a grin. "Great job, doc. You should take that show on the road."

"Isn't that why I'm here with you?" he retorts. He wipes off the needle and turns to wrap it back up and put it in his pack. Chemists pay good money for refillable hypos, since they're such a pain in the ass to make. A penny saved, etc. "Too bad you can't stimpak that jacket."

She looks mournfully down at the shredded leather. "Tell me about it. Well, let's take a look around, see what we can find."

They spend the rest of the afternoon cleaning the place out, at least of everything they can reasonably carry. Most of the old food Sole leaves where she finds it, deeming it too bulky for them to carry, but there's a fair bit of meds and clean water, and the loading dock downstairs turns out to have a recycling bin with a fucking treasure trove of bottle caps. Takes them an hour to collect the damn things, but it totals up to a tidy haul, and that's not even counting some of the wiring Sole manages to pull from the old security system. Good stuff, too: copper, high grade and not too badly damaged. Mac doesn't know a lot about electronics, but he knows those should fetch a good price to the right vendor. Easy to carry, too.

They also find three bodies - not ferals, just some poor bastards who got caught by the pack. All three of them are wearing Minutemen gear, and Mac hates the way that her face goes still when she sees them. Hates even more the sight of them lying there, poor dumb bastards just trying to get away from a killbox, only to find themselves in another one. From the state of things, they've been dead just a few months - Quincy survivors, then. Or folk who missed the muster and tried to catch up later, the fucking idiots. He's pretty sure she wasn't with the Minutemen before, they weren't her people when they went down, but that doesn't seem to make a difference to the boss. She goes all tight and bloodless at the sight of them, and Mac has to turn away when she picks up the holotapes, rather than look at the flex of her jaw, the way her stitches stand out in sharp relief against her pale face. It's not grief, not exactly. But her anger doesn't make his guilt any easier to swallow.

Some fucking Christmas.

By the time they're done it's getting dark, and they make camp back in one of the windowless back rooms, where no enterprising souls will catch the light from their lamps and come knocking. They end up under the coffee machine thing again, and Mac eyes it with disfavor while Sole sorts through their scav, breaking things down and sorting them out between the two of them. She wasn't too squeamish not to strip the Minutemen, he notices, as she stashes a pair of capacitors in his pack. Practical.

He nods to the leather duster slung over the back of a nearby chair. "You going to take that as a replacement?"

She shakes her head. "Too big," she explains. "Too loose through the shoulders means my pack'll slip around all damn day, and that's the kinda distraction I can't afford if I get stuck at close range. Gear with bad fit-"

"-worse than no gear at all," he finishes. "Yeah, I've heard that one too. Still, at least you've got the leather to patch yours."

She makes a face. "Can't sew."

"What do you mean, you can't sew?"

"I mean, I can't sew."

He can't help but boggle. "But _everyone_ knows how to sew, boss. It's like, I dunno, not knowing how to shoot."

She smiles wryly down at the scope she's cleaning. "Shooting I can handle. Sewing, not so much. Look, I just never got the chance to learn, okay? There was always something else I could do instead. Things that didn't involve me sitting around stabbing myself in the thumb trying to put a couple of pieces of cloth together."

Mac scrubs one palm over his face. This explains so much, really. "I'm guessing you were doing other things when cooking lessons were handed out, too."

Embarrassed silence. "I was a very active child."

"Yeah, I bet." He sighs and holds out his hand. "Give it here. I'll patch it up for you."

"You think I'm going to argue but I'm not," she says cheerfully, and snags both coats. "I will take shameless advantage of your moment of weakness."

"Yeah, well, don't get used to it," he grumbles, but it's impossible not to smile in the face of her good cheer. He can tell from her smug look that she caught him at it, too. Ah, well, can't win 'em all.

Mac's not the best hand with a needle by far, but he gets by all right - has to, as often as he's had to patch his own stuff. By the time they're ready to turn in for the night, he's cut away the shredded pieces and stitched on a very serviceable patch, if he does say so himself. The other duster is a little lighter than hers, but it doesn't look too bad. Almost like someone did it on purpose.

Sole laughs when she sees it, and he flushes a little, but it doesn't sound mean. "It looks great!" she says, and he's sure she could lie with a smile but she seems honestly pleased. "Man, stitch an anarchy symbol on that bastard and I would've killed to have something like this when I was a kid."

Mac blinks at her. "Um?"

She waves her hand dismissively. "Misspent youth," she says, as if that explains anything. "You did an awesome job."

He's starting to get used to the little flush of warmth he gets every time she gives him a compliment, but that doesn't make it any more comfortable. "Well, try it on first, make sure it fits," he cautions, trying not to smile too obviously. "The seam could pop the first time you roll your shoulder."

"Bet it doesn't," she says, but she obligingly rolls to her feet and tries it on. The seam holds just fine when she rolls her shoulder, even when she pulls out her knife and tries a few jabs and swings. The bite was on her left side, but she doesn't seem much clumsier with her off hand than she does with her right. Mac's not even surprised.

"So?"

She laughs and the knife disappears back up her sleeve. "Like I said, it's great." She scruffs her knuckles lightly across the top of his head as she steps over him to settle onto her own bedroll. "You do good work."

"I try." He leans back on his hands, grins over at her. "Call it your Christmas present."

She freezes.

"Don't tell me you forgot."

"It's been a busy couple of months!" she defends herself, still looking a little shell-shocked. "I haven't exactly been checking the calendar. Shit, is it seriously?"

"December 24th." He's not sure why it's so funny that she'd lose track of a thing like that, but it is. Good to know she's human after all, maybe. "Christmas Eve."

"Damn." She looks down at her coat in consternation. "And here I didn't get you anything."

_Only my life_ , he thinks, in sudden, embarrassed honesty. There's every chance he wouldn't still be here, kicking around the Commonwealth, if she hadn't sauntered into the Third Rail and plucked him out of his own fucking mess like some kind of fairy godmother right out of a kid's book. That'd be big enough, but the rest of it - her jokes, her trust, her easy companionship on the road - it's a lot. It's more than he's had since Lucy died. It's everything he wanted when he stumbled into the Commonwealth and joined up with the first merc group that would take an outsider, only to realize that they weren't any better than the raiders they were killing.

And then she saved him from that, too.

"Uh, I think we're even, Boss," he says, in possibly the biggest lie he's ever told. "Don't worry about it."

"Hmm." She looks over at him, the sharp bony angles of her face softened by the glow of the lantern, and she's not wearing her shades but damned if he's any closer to figuring out what goes through her head. "If you say so. You about ready to turn in?"

He seizes gratefully on the change of subject. "Gotta take a leak first. You?"

She shakes her head. "Mine the door on your way back," she instructs. "Don't much feel like posting watch tonight."

He salutes sloppily. "Roger that," he says, then grabs his rifle and slips off.

She's already tucked down in her bedroll when he gets back, the lantern extinguished and only the glow of her Pip-boy to the light the way for him. He'd think her asleep except for the way the light catches on the whites of her eyes, slitted and watching his approach. He brushes the backs of his fingers against her shoulder as he steps over her, like the world's smallest game of duck-duck-goose, and she gives a pleased little hum and closes her eyes. She waits politely until he gets into his own bedroll then kills the light.

Darkness falls over them, blanketing and complete, and Mac wriggles a little to get comfortable. The blankets are unexpectedly thin and chilly after two nights sliding into Sole's heavier, pre-warmed blankets when they trade off the watch shift. _Quit your bitchin',_ he tells himself, _it's not that cold in here_. They're under cover and out the wind, what the hell more could he want?

He sighs.

A moment later, there's an answering sigh from the other bedroll, and then Sole abruptly pushes a few inches closer, puts her narrow back against his. Even separated by a couple layers of blankets, he can still feel the heat she's putting off, and he wriggles his shoulder against hers in thanks before tucking down his head and falling asleep.

###### 

The next day, they finally manage to catch up to a caravan.

"Merry Christmas," Sole says, when she spots them. "Looks like I got you something after all."

It's just about the smallest, saddest caravan he's ever seen, and Mac's got some doozies for comparison. There's only a couple guards, an older man and a woman who's either his daughter or his niece, with the twitchy eyes of someone who hits the jet a little too hard, and a teenager leading the brahmin with the same dark eyes and hooked nose as the others. Worse yet, there's a pair of passengers walking with them, a farmer and his daughter that look like they'd blow over in a stiff wind, carrying packs just about as big as they are.

"Is there a returns policy?"

She just snorts. "Those two farmers look like they're heading north to Tenpines for work."

"So?"

"So, Tenpines is one of mine," she says, and flags them down. "Ahoy there! Any chance you'd like a couple of extra guns for the next few nights?"

Not surprisingly, they are _delighted_ for the help. The father, who seems to be the nominal leader of the family, accepts the two of them in with a flourish of goodwill that reeks of desperation and leaves Mac rolling his eyes. Not like he doesn't understand; with him and Sole in the mix, the little group looks a lot more capable than it actually is. Too much for most raiders to attempt, which is the biggest risk along the highways. Mac wouldn't have bothered to stop if he'd seen them on his own, but the boss says guard, so he'll guard. Not the worst work he's ever done.

And at least it's not a total waste of their time. The going is slow, but the boss negotiated them out of having to share watches at night, and he gets to eat someone's else's cooking for a change, which is almost payment enough in and of itself. (The boss shoves him for that one, when he points it out.) And their help means that they're cut a much better deal on their scav than they'd've gotten otherwise, so Mac sure as shit isn't going to complain about that. Damn near covered his week's paycheck out of that alone, and they even manage to restock some ammo without selling an arm and a leg for it. All around, a pretty sweet setup.

When they make camp the first night, Mac spends the better part of the evening peeling tatos for the stewpot and watching the boss get waylaid by the farmer's kid. She wants to know why Sole cut her hair like that, and then when Sole makes the mistake of answering, she wants to know just about everything else under the sun, too. Mac's all set to go rescue her (after a couple minutes of entertainment first, of course) but the boss is a lot more patient with the squirt than Mac would have expected. She gives steady, matter-of-fact, thoughtful answers, and if she doesn't know she'll just say so, doesn't try to make something up or make the kid feel stupid for asking. When she graduates to showing off some of some of her more complicated knife tricks, Mac grins down at his tatos and leaves her to her fate. If she needs rescuing, she'll let him know.

"Look at you, making new friends," he says when they bed down for the night. She looks up from where she's laying out her bedroll next to his and gives him the eyebrow, and for a moment he's worried he's overstepped, but then-

"All I get is sass from you," she says mildly. "Why, you got something against kids?"

Mac has to snort a laugh at the irony of _that_ question, but hastens to answer before she can think he's laughing at her. "Like 'em better than most adults. I just wouldn't have figured you for the type." Then he remembers seeing her with Piper's little sister, back in Diamond City. "Though you're obviously good with them."

She shrugs and flops down on her bedroll, limbs flung haphazardly out every which way. He frowns and kicks her boot back off his blankets. "It's not hard. Kids like it when you're honest. I guess their parents tend to lie to them to make them feel better." She frowns. "Never got that one. How's that supposed to help anything?"

_Daddy, are you going to come back soon?_

Mac shakes his head to clear it, but Duncan's voice still echoes in his ears. "It depends on what you have to tell them," he tells her, his throat tight. "Sometimes it's all you can do, you know?"

There's a little pause, and Mac curses again at his runaway tongue: too rude, too personal, not her problem, pick one. But then she stretches out her toe to nudge him in the shin - in apology, reassurance, he's not sure which - and he figures they're good.

"Aww, don't listen too much to me," she says gently. "What the fuck do I know? Most of the kids I met, I was busy shooting the people trying to kill 'em."

He lets out a slow breath and sits down next to her. She offers him a tentative smile, and he returns it. "Yeah? Never wanted one of your own?"

She shifts and looks away, and he starts taking off his boots, giving her time to answer. _I won't take it personally if she changes the subject,_ he thinks, but a moment later she sighs and says, "I did." Her voice is a little distant, and when he glances over out of the corner of his eyes, he sees her staring straight ahead into the distance, not looking at him. "A long time ago."

There's a whole novel's worth of story in those six works, but Mac's not going to press. It's just common sense not to ask questions unless you're willing to answer them in turn, and he's pretty damn sure he's not ready to open up that particular can of worms. Maybe someday he'll be ready to spill the whole sordid story, lay out his fucked-up life for her judgement and listen to her pick apart his poor decisions with the same ruthless calculation she uses in the field, but- No. Not today. Maybe not ever.

He nudges his knee against hers, trying to lighten the mood a little. "You're good with them, though. That girl thinks you hung the moon."

"Yeah, but kids are easily impressed," she says. Some of the tension leaks out of her voice, and he knows they're on the same page again. Just the way he likes it. "They're not old enough yet to figure out when you're full of shit."

Mac grins down at his boots and starts pulling at the laces again. "Can't argue with that."

She leans up on her elbows. "She's a good kid though," she says, thoughtfully. "Smart. Her dad's done a good job. I know Calla will be happy to have them up at Tenpines. They could use a few extra hands to get the beds prepped before the ground goes into full freeze."

Mac pictures the map and does a few quick calculations in his head. "Looks like they split off tomorrow. We going with them?"

She shakes her head. "We promised Matthew we'd stay with the caravan at least three days, and we need to push on towards Greentop. They'll be fine on their own; it's not that far and as long as they stick to the roads they shouldn't have any trouble."

"No weapons, though," Mac can't help but point out.

"I'll send them off with the laser musket we pulled off those Minutemen. It should get them there in one piece. And I'll tell them where to find the food cache we left in the store."

"You trust them with that?"

"That guy seem like the type to take the info and run?" Sole retorts, and yeah, okay, Mac can kinda see her point. If the little girl looked at Sole like she hung the moon, that man looked at her like at her like she was the second coming. You can get a lotta mileage from loyalty like that.

"Yeah, okay, fair enough."

"And it'll send a message to Calla, that I'm still looking out for them," Sole continues thoughtfully. "They won't want to do anything right now, trying to get stuff finished up in the fields, but as soon as the ground freezes they're going to want to get off the farm and stock up before it gets too cold to travel. And walking the roads together will give them a chance to get used to working as a group, work out some of the kinks before they have to face a real push on their home territory. It's win/win."

Mac can only shake his head. Someday she's going to stop impressing him with the way she plays all the angles, but apparently today isn't going to be that day. "Out of curiosity, Boss. Are you ever _not_ planning something?"

She purses her lips and stares thoughtfully up at the starry sky. "Maybe when I'm asleep."

"I don't believe it," he says, and shoves at her shoulder affectionately. "Budge over, you're lying on my blankets."

She rolls obligingly sideways and they both wriggle shiveringly down into their bedrolls, then sprawls back over, her knees knocking against his through the blankets. "Speaking of, we've got to get you an upgrade. You could read newsprint through that thing."

Mac doesn't bristle at the slight to his gear, but only because she's right. The last time winter rolled through the Commonwealth, he had the Gunners to supply for him. On his own, he couldn't afford anything better. "Why bother?" he says instead. "You put out enough heat for both of us."

"I am a marvel of human engineering," she says loftily, taking the hint and rolling onto her side so he can press his back greedily against hers, soaking up the warmth. "But it's only going to get colder from here on out."

He sighs. "One problem at a time, Boss."

He can feel her muffled laughter in the shake of her shoulders against him. "Sure thing, MacCready," she says. "Let's get to Greentop, first, and then we can worry about the rest."


	6. Chapter 6

The next couple days are fairly peaceful, though Mac still kind of wishes that they'd split off from the caravan. It's nearly halved their travelling speed, stuck down to the pace of an overloaded brahmin, and he's pretty dubious about the benefits of additional security that travelling with a caravan usually provides. If they are attacked, he and the boss will have to provide the majority of the defense anyway. They'd be better off on their own, where they can move faster and quieter, without having to play babysitter.

"You in a hurry?" Sole asks him on the third night, when he points this out.

He raises an eyebrow. "You aren't?"

She grins at him. "Nope."

He rolls his eyes. "What about that settlement we're going to help? Greentop? Aren't you worried about them?"

"What, that they won't be there when I get there?" she finishes, amused. "Doubtful. If the situation was that pressing, they wouldn't have had time to sent a runner down to the Castle, would they? They're probably getting pressure from the local raiders, or have a nest of ferals nearby. Nothing they can't handle in the short term, but that shit stacks up eventually, and who's got the time to go clean it out at the source?"

Mac hides a smile very badly. "Nobody but crazy ass- uh, folk like you, Boss."

"Just exactly right," she says with satisfaction. "Eventually we'll build back up to the point where we've got actual troops to take care of this shit. But we can't get there without support."

"So in the meantime, you merc for free."

"The caps in your pocket say different," she retorts. "And it pays off in the long run more than you'd think. Help out a farm, they'll fly your banner, which means that they send food, extra caps when they have it, give you a safe place to sleep when you're travelling. During the off seasons they'll send their extra farmhands down for training, because it means they don't have to worry about bed and board for a few months, and some of those will stay on and do it full-time. That way you can start to build up patrols, which means that you can look out for your settlements, maybe even hit a couple of big targets. Clean out some of the nasties, make a splash. Pretty soon, word gets out: you fly the Minutemen banner, and you've got protection from raiders, muties, what have you. It's safer, it's easier, and it's good for business, since it'll cost you less in a year than you'd lose trying to handle your own defense."

Mac stares at her. "You put a lot of thought into this."

"This isn't the first time I've had to get people to defend themselves," she says easily. "Hell, it's the first time I wasn't doing it in enemy territory."

"I've got news for you, boss," Mac says solemnly. "This is the wasteland. It's _all_ enemy territory."

"Maybe," she says. She leans back onto her elbows, tilts her head back and stares up at the stars. Mac's gaze follows the long line of her throat before he looks away. "Maybe just for now. We'll see."

Mac can't do anything but shake his head. "You've got vision, I'll say that much for you," he sighs. "So how does the caravan fit into it?"

She looks over at him and raises an eyebrow. "You're smart," she says. "You figure it out."

"Wasn't much for school the first time around," he warns, but it's not too hard to put together, now that he's got a feel for the way she thinks. "Trade," he says. "You're gonna use one of your settlements as a trade hub, lure some people out of old Boston. You can't get there without caravans heading that way."

"See, I told you," she says. "Now for the extra special bonus round: where would I want to build up trade?"

"This is definitely starting to feel like school," he complains, but considers it anyway. Rumors from the wastes don't come through all that often, but settlement beacons usually get a mention when they crop up, and there've been quite a few lately. Her work, of course. He probably should've realized that earlier.

"Starlight?"

She gives an approving rumble at the back of her throat. "Got it in one."

He squints at her a little. "Lot of space in Starlight."

Her little grin crinkles the corners of her eyes, pulls at the stitches in her cheek. He's going to have to take those out soon. "Yep."

"Almost as much space as Diamond City."

"Might be."

He sighs, an answering smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "You're crazy," he tells her, and her smile widens into a grin as she turns to look at him.

"Maybe. But you're still following me around, so what does that make you?"

"Fiscally responsible," he replies promptly, which earns a crack of laughter, quickly muffled when one of the others wakes up enough to glare at them.

"You're all right, MacCready," she says, and reaches out, gives his arm a squeeze. He leans into it, slight enough that she hopefully doesn't notice. "Get some sleep. Take advantage of not having to post watch while you can; we've more of the same tomorrow."

"Yes ma'am," he says, just to hear her chuckle, and settles down to follow orders.

###### 

But the next day isn't more of the same. The next day, they're barely on the road an hour before they spot another group coming down the way - seven of them, well-armed and painted like raiders. On their own, he and the boss would probably veer off the road, set up a choke point from the trees on each side and take them out in the crossfire, but that's not going to be an option with the caravan. Mac curses and pulls out his rifle, shoving a couple of clips in his pocket for quick reload.

Sole does the same, but with her shotgun. It's going to be a close-quarters fight. The raiding party hasn't opened fire yet, which means that they're going to try and extort a toll instead, probably figuring that seven on five isn't the kind of odds they want to play. They don't know that Sole and Mac are the only proper guns in the group, but they've got to be figuring that your average caravan guard isn't the sharpest tool in the shed. Easier to intimidate, maybe imply that they've got backup waiting in the wings.

Mac knows better. No raiding party's going to be big enough that seven is their token force. Raiders travel cross-country, and there's always something bigger and badder out there. The larger your party, the more attention you draw, and a yao gui or a radscorpion doesn't give a shit how many guns you're carrying; it just wants dinner. Plus, there's no good place for backup to be hiding around here. Even if they do have some spares, it would take time for them to get close enough to be useful. No, this is all they've got.

Not great odds, but Mac's seen worse. He bumps his shoulder against Sole's to let her know he'll be moving off and then does, shifting to fall back near the brahmin's shoulder, where he can get a few quick shots off and use the beast for cover if he has to.

He's still got a nice, clear view of everything going on up front, though. Which means that he's treated to a front-row seat of the raiders trying to intimate the boss, and the boss not giving even one tenth of a shit.

"I don't think you're understanding what I'm saying," the big scarred-up one at the front drawls, all faux-friendly. "I'm saying, if you don't pay us five hundred caps right now, we're going to shoot all of you and take it from you. If we're feeling generous, we'll make sure we kill you the first time around, instead of shooting you in the gut and leaving you for a dog pack to find. I think five hundred is a fair compensation for your lives, don't you?"

The boss doesn't blink. "Taggert, you dipshit, you wouldn't be trying this shit if you hadn't fried your brain so bad on Jet you damn well forgot who I was."

There's a long, slow silence. "General," the big guy - Taggert - says. He sounds a lot less friendly now. "If I'd known you were out here, I would have come sooner."

"And if I'd known Boomer was stupid enough to send his people out raiding after what I did to the last pack, I would have shot him dead between the eyes and left him for you to pick over his corpse," the boss says pleasantly. She lets her left hand drop down to her side, and Mac follows it, watches her fingers beat a tattoo against the worn leather over her thigh. One-two-three, one-two-three. "Want to try this again like civilized people? You turn around and crawl back to your little hidey-hole, and I'll forget Boomer broke the accord so I won't feel obliged to kill you and everyone you've ever known."

"Bullshit, Tag," the little one behind him says. "Look at these sorry bastards. She's got fuckin' bupkus."

"He's right," the woman says. Her throat and the backs of her hands are marked up with black dots - kill tags. A sniper. She'll be shit in close range. "You know how much Boomer'll pay for her head."

Taggert sighs, reaching back behind him and starting to pull out the machete sheathed across his back. "I guess that's true," he says, with a reluctance so fake you can taste the bloodlust underneath. "Guess there's nothing for it. We'll just have to-"

Sole's hand flattens against her thigh, and Mac lets out a breath and squeezes the trigger. First bullet straight between Taggert's eyes, permanently removing any chance they'll ever have of finding out exactly what he's going to have to do. His second bullet goes through the throat of the sniper as pandemonium breaks out, but his third shot at the weaselly little fuck goes haywire in the melee, and he spends the rest of his clip trying without success to clip him as everyone scatters. He curses and ducks down to reload, but unfortunately the deafening rattle of gunfire covers the sound of someone coming up behind him, and when he straightens up to aim he's greeted with the sickening _crunch_ of a pool cue impacting with his left knee.

"Oh _fuck!_ " he shouts, and goes down, staggering hard against the bellowing brahmin and hitting the ground. Hooves flash way too near his head, and he rolls frantically away to the side, his leg screaming at him in protest. He comes up on his back in time to see the raider looming over him, makeshift bludgeon raised high over his head to strike. Mac fumbles with his rifle, but there's no way he's going to get it up in time, not before the bastard gets him in the head and then it's going to be bye-bye MacCready, nice knowin' ya, see you in hell. Fuck, fuck, fuck-

The butt of the boss's shotgun impacts with the raider's nose with a wet _crunch,_ and the guy drops like a stone, barely missing landing on Mac's bad leg. He looks up to see the boss's worried face over his, the sudden quiet eerie after all the gunfire.

"We good?" he croaks, and the boss nods.

"All clear," she says, and drops her shotgun to hold out a hand. He wonders why she didn't offer him her left until she hauls him painfully to his feet and throws her shoulder under his to keep them from toppling, and he sees that her other wrist is canted at an odd angle.

"Well, that's definitely broken."

"Took a boot in the melee," she sighs, and nods down to his knee. "You don't look much better. Can you put weight on it?"

He tries, tentatively, and then has to suck in a breath and lean on her when it gives a bone-grinding shift and shrieks with pain. "Not so much," he grits out.

"Yeah, I figured." She shifts, squaring up her weight under him. "C'mon, let's get you out of the way, I can splint that up and find you a crutch."

"Not gonna argue," he breathes, and lets her guide him over to a big rock by the side of the road. He collapses onto it gratefully, grabbing his thigh with both hands like he can block the pain from coming up, and nods at her shortly. "I'm good. Take care of cleanup first."

She does do a quick visual survey of the rest of their party, but no one seems to be seriously injured, so as he watches she goes over to the slumped form of the body of the raider who took out Mac's knee, just now starting to groan and stir. She squats down next to him, slaps him around a few times until he's awake, and then settles in for a bit of conversation, during which time the raider grows increasingly pale at whatever she's saying to him. Though that could just be the blood loss: it's pouring out of his face from where she shattered his nose.

Eventually Sole winds her speech to a close and divests him of the pool cue he's still got in his slackened hands. She stands up, says something that has the bastard scuttling backwards - not fast enough, Mac notices with pleasure, before she she brings the end of it down on his knee with a _crunch_ that Mac can hear from all the way on the other side of the road. The raider howls in pain, and then the boss does it another time, and another, her easy smile never shifting from her face, before she gives him a nice friendly nod and turns away to check on the guards. Behind her, the raider tries to get to his feet, falls, and then turns and crawls away toward the opposite side of the road. Mac watches him go, falling through the ditch and pulling himself desperately up again on the other side, finally finding his feet when he reaches the edge of the woods and finally, vanishing into the treeline.

Mac looks back to see Sole coming over with their packs hooked awkwardly over her good wrist, the pool cue tucked under her arm. Behind her, the rest of the caravan is clustered into a defensive huddle around the brahmin, tending to their own wounds. The head guard, Matthew, is staring in their direction, but he looks away with a jerk when he sees Mac looking back. "They seem freaked."

Sole shrugs and drops the packs at his feet. "I don't think they liked the message I left for Boomer."

Mac grins. _Good fuckin' riddance._ "I liked it."

She grins back at him. "That's because you understand the value of communication in a workplace setting," she says mildly, and puts her boot in the middle of the pool cue, pulls upward on the end and breaks it in half with a brisk _crack._ "First stimpak now, or get your boot off first?"

Stims are known to cause swelling in the extremities for the first few minutes after application, due to the rapid rise in blood pressure. He knows from experience that it's hard to take one and keep shooting when your fingers get fat and clumsy on the trigger. Getting the boot off is going to hurt like a bitch, but getting it off his foot if it swells is going to be so much worse. And it's not like they've got any spares hanging around, so they can't afford to cut it off. "Boot first," he says, already regretting the decision. "Stimpak right after."

"Probably a good call." She kneels next to him and pulls a spare shirt out of her pack. "My turn to lose clothing for first aid," she teases, tearing it up into strips with her teeth and her good hand. He bends over and undoes the laces for her, since it's going to be hard enough for her to get it off one-handed as it is. "We're gonna buy out the Commonwealth at this rate."

"Hope you don't expect me to buy you a replacement from Fallon's," Mac says, his voice breaking in the middle as she braces her knee under his calf and starts to ease his boot off by the heel. It's about as loose as they can make it but jesus, jesus, jesus christ- "I don't - ah! - have the caps to waste."

"Would it make you feel better if I say I got it on sale?" She tosses the boot to the side and gives him a stimpak to the thigh before she sets about slitting his pants up past his knee, folding it away so she can better see the damage. She grimaces. "Okay, yeah, that's busted to hell. I'm going to have to set this, but I'll need both hands. Can you do my wrist first?"

"Sure thing, Boss," he says. She hunts clumsily through her pack until she comes up with a couple of the flat steel hands they'd pulled off some of the torn-up shipping crates in the store. "You sure you want to use those? I thought you were hanging onto them to reinforce your wristguards."

"Technically," she says with a quirk of an eyebrow, "I _am._ "

He sighs. "Give 'em here."

He can't get her glove off without cutting it, unfortunately, but he's careful to slit it open along an outside seam, shoving it into his pack and promising himself that he'll stitch it back together the first chance he gets. Even that is enough to make her pale and glassy-eyed, clenching her jaw so that she doesn't cry out. He cradles her hand on his good knee and bites his lip, looking up at her.

"You sure you don't want to take a belt of something first, Boss?"

She shakes her head. "We're going to have to get moving after this," she says. "I need to keep a clear head. Just do it."

It's an ugly business, putting a bone back into place, but he's had plenty of practice over the years, helping out Lucy when they were kids and dealing with field medicine after. He gets it done as fast and clean as he can, and gives her a stimpak after and another when he's done splinting. She has to sit there for a minute before the stims work well enough that she can move her fingers again, but then she turns and grabs the splints to return the favor.

"What about you? I think the merchant's got a half-bottle of whiskey if you want."

He shakes his head. "You're not the only one who needs to keep their head clear," he says, and she gives him a smile so approving that it makes warmth flush clear down the length of his spine.

"That's my boy," she says, and gives his good knee a squeeze. "You need to grab something, grab onto me."

He's not too proud to keep from taking her up on it, and he's probably left bruises on her shoulder by the time it's done, but he doesn't cry out and that's about all he can manage right now. She wraps up his knee as quickly and efficiently as she can with a bum hand, giving him two more of their remaining four stimpaks, even when he protests. "If I could give you more without overdosing you I would," she tells him firmly, shuffling things around from his pack to hers so he'll have less to carry. "You've got to walk on that. Hopefully not too far, but-"

He grimaces down at his knee. It's shaped a little less like a baseball than it was before, but still. "You might have a point."

"I do try," she says agreeably. "Gimme a second, I think I saw a cane on one of them that you can use." She looks over at him. "Will that work, or do we need to make you up a crutch?"

He's not the tallest of individuals, but there isn't much around that'll be long enough, and sturdy enough, to work. He manages a smile. "Cane'll do me just fine."

She gives him a skeptical look like she knows what he's thinking, but clearly decides to let it pass, just rubs her knuckles on his good knee and climbs to her feet to go check over the bodies. One of the guards waylays her while she's at it - the husband, the one who's been chattier than the rest, happy to meet new people and make some new friends - and even from a distance Mac can see the thundercloud on his face. The boss straightens up with the cane in her hand, and Mac grabs his rifle and pulls it close to him. Just in case.

Their discussion is brief but intense, and clearly unfriendly, for all that the boss seems like she's doing her best to keep her cool. He knows the way she's holding herself by now, though. Boss is _pissed._

And well she should be, Mac realizes, when the guard finally loses it enough to shout at her: "-bring this all down on _our_ heads!"

This is so unjust that Mac can't just sit there and listen, even though he knows that the boss wouldn't want him to intervene. "Hey!" he says, and, regretting it even as he does it, he shoves himself to his feet (well, foot) and limp-hops over, using his rifle as a crutch. "That's bullsh- crap and you know it! They didn't even know who she was until she told them!"

"MacCready, sit your ass back down," Sole says, but the guard just swaps his glare over to him, impartial in his anger.

"Oh yeah? Then what was that about having an 'accord,' huh? And why'd she let one _go?_ "

Mac just stares at him. "Are you too stupid to live? If a whole raiding party goes dark, they send out more to investigate. Send back one with the message that we're coming for the rest, they'll hole up and go defensive. She just made sure you had enough time to get away clean, you dumb-" He stops before he says something that'll make him break his promise. "You'd be dead twice over if it wasn't for us! Your _family_ would be dead!"

The man's face just- crumples. There's no other word for it. "I know," Matthew says heavily, "I know, but she-" He shakes his head. "You can't trust people like that, kid. Take my advice and get out while you can."

Mac's sure that there's something that asshole could have said to piss him off faster, but he's hard-pressed to think of it right now. "You can take your advice and f- shove it," he snaps. "Do you have a single f- freakin' grateful bone in your body? You'd be dead or worse if we hadn't been here, and you're complaining about how we did it? What the heck is wrong with you?"

"You didn't hear what she said to him," Matthew says, low. Mac looks at him and realizes that he's shaking, that most of his anger is just a white-hot cover for fear. And he's not looking at the bodies of the raiders that almost killed him. He's looking at Sole. "You didn't- Look, whatever, it's not my problem if you wanna follow her and get yourself killed, but I can't have that shit around my family. I just can't."

Mac gives the boss a look, like, _This is why you don't stick your neck out for people,_ but she's looking away from both of them. There's something tense in the line of her shoulders that reads almost like shame, and it's so wrong that Mac has to grind his teeth against the injustice of it. "You mean someone who'll lend a hand to your pathetic-"

"MacCready," the boss sighs.

"I don't need that kind of help!"

"I'm fairly frickin' certain you did!" Mac growls, but this time the boss puts a hand to his shoulder and squeezes, and he can't ignore that. He shoots her a fast look. "Well, he did," he mutters, and she smiles at him and then turns back to Matthew, who manages to be simultaneously shamefaced and defiant.

"Why don't you get your family and your people moving," she says, in a friendly tone that nonetheless does not provide any option of disagreement. "You don't like how I handle things, that's fine. We go our separate ways."

Matthew nods heavily. "I am grateful," he says. "I just-"

"I know," Sole says. "Good luck."

Matthew nods jerkily and wheels away. "Manda! Jeremy! Time to get moving."

Sole sighs and shifts around to MacCready's other side, sliding her arm around his waist to hold him up. He leans on her gratefully, muttering, "What a freakin' idiot."

The boss huffs a soft half-laugh. "He's not so bad," she says. "A little soft, but a few more times 'round the Commonwealth will knock it out of him."

"Or it'll get him killed," Mac says, more pessimistically, and she shrugs.

"Time'll tell." She nudges him with the handle of the cane, tucked awkwardly under his right armpit from where she's supporting him. "All right, hotshot, take this. We'll get going as soon as they're out of the way."

He complies, handing it off to his other hand and shifting to lean on it instead of her. She's slow to let him go, making sure that he can take the weight before she eases out from under his arm. She gives the back of his neck a final reassuring squeeze before she slips off to pick over the bodies of the raiders. He hobbles back to his rock and slides down into a sitting position - no need to put any more strain on his knee than absolutely necessary - and watches her pull out ammo, caps, chems, anything useful and small enough to carry easily. Adding weight to their packs is going to be even more problematic than usual until he can get his knee back to normal.

A shadow falls over him, and he looks up, reaching out to put a hand to his rifle. It's just the kid, though - Jeremy, the youngest, the quiet one with the wry sense of humor. Mac tilts his head and lets his hand fall away from his gun. "Thought you guys were moving out."

"We are, we just-" The kid sighs and holds out a bag. "Here. I know it's shitty payment, considering what you guys did for us, but it's all we've got right now."

Mac takes it warily, but there's not much weight to it, just a faint rattle of plastic and glass. When he tugs it open and peers inside, he's greeted by a jumble of syringes and inhalers - stimpaks, Med-X, and a pretty decent stash of Jet. He looks up with a raised eyebrow.

"Generous," he says, and the kid flushes.

"I don't know if you guys, uh. Or you could sell it?" He rubs one dirt-smeared hand across the back of his neck. "Look, Manda and I, we feel bad about what Dad said, so, look. There's a boathouse up the road, maybe a couple miles? Last I heard some bloodbugs got in there, but you can clear them out it'll be good place to crash while you stim up."

Mac does a quick bit of math. A couple miles does put them right up against the river, yeah. It's a hike, given his knee, but not any worse than they'd have to do anyway. He doesn't know if the boss is gonna be up for clearing out a bloodbug nest, but it's worth considering. Better than trying to camp on the open road when they're gimped like this.

"Thanks," he says, and means it. The kid smiles at him, a little shyly, and turns away, and Mac sighs and goes with his gut. "Hey."

The kid turns back and blinks at him. "Yeah?"

"You ever go by a place flyin' the flag, they'll have a bunk for you for the night."

A pause. "Even after Dad-"

Mac thinks about what Sole said last night. About her bigger picture. "Yeah. Even so. Maybe even more than just the night, if you want."

Jeremy shoves his hands in his pockets. "I'll, uh. I'll definitely let them know." A wry little smile. "Maybe in a day or two."

Mac grins. "Probably a good idea." He holds out his hand. "Take care."

Jeremy takes it and shakes. His palm is rough with callous, grooves cut into it from years holding a brahmin's lead-rein. _When I was his age,_ Mac thinks, _I was heading out of Little Lamplight for the first time. And I can't say that I handled my shit even half as well as he is now._ His father's an asshole, but Mac's never been a big believer in 'blood will out.' A man's got to make his own way in the world. Kid's making a good start for himself.

"You too," Jeremy says, low, and then turns and goes back to his family.

Mac doesn't watch them go, watches Sole instead, stripping and moving the last couple corpses off the road. Her cap is crumpled up and shoved into her pocket, and he lets his gaze linger on the bright cheerful bob of her ponytail, the way the midmorning sun paints copper and bronze into the red. Her sunglasses start to slide down her nose, and she shoves them impatiently back up with the back of her good wrist. A tiny smear of blood is left behind on her cheek, and Mac leverages himself up, hobbles over to join her.

"Find anything useful on 'em?"

"Some caps," she says. "Cheap ammo, couple'a bottles of pure. Shitload of chems. The usual."

He holds out the goodie bag. "Got some extra to add to that stash."

She opens it and peers inside. "Nice. The son?" She shrugs when he looks at her. "Saw you two chatting."

Occasionally reckless, definitely. Unaware of her surroundings, never. "He had another present for us. Apparently there's a boathouse just a couple miles down the road that we can use to crash."

"'kay. So what's the catch?"

He has to smile. "Bloodbug nest." He nods to her wrist. "And that's not gonna be too happy at the kickback from a gun."

"Mmm. Good point. But-" She reaches into her pack, undoing the buckles one-handed, and pulls out a folding baton, the metal kind that you mostly find in vaults and police stations. "Still got one good hand left."

He eyes it. It looks innocuous, lying in her hand like that, but he's taken a few blows from security guards over the years and he knows how heavy they actually are. "You even know how to use that thing, Boss?"

She snaps it out to its full length with one quick flick of her wrist, the end sparking suddenly with crisp blue light. Modded with an Institute stun pack, _nice_. She paints a lazy figure-eight with it, her wrist loose and limber; in retrospect, he's not entirely sure that he's surprised. It's not like her to carry a weapon she can't use.

"I wouldn't want to get into a duel with it, if that's what you're asking. But against a bloodbug? I'm thinking it'll hold up just fine." She grins at him. "And besides, nothing wrong with your trigger finger. I know you've got my back."

Mac thinks about the way she'd taken the pool cue to that raider's knee, expressionless and easy, with about as much emotional investment as someone taking out the trash. _You didn't hear what she said to him,_ Matthew told him, but Mac's got a pretty good idea. He's had to spin threats a time or two himself, and while he's sure they weren't as creative as the boss could come up with, he's got the gist. And taking out the knee was sensible, as far as Mac's concerned. Once, to make it so he couldn't run and alert any potential backup that might be in the area, just in case they'd miscalculated. Twice, to send a message to Boomer about what she'd do to the rest of his people. None of it was _personal._

But the third time? That third one was just for him.

"'course I do, Boss," he says, and stands a little straighter. "You point and I'll shoot."


	7. Chapter 7

Mac wasn't wrong about the distance to get to the boathouse, but he might have slightly overestimated his ability to get there. They make it - if barely - but Sole had to use another two stimpaks out of their stash just to keep him on his feet, and at this point he's pretty much moving on sheer willpower and the desire not to be the asshole who drops out when the boss still needs him to watch her back. The ache in his knee is so huge, so all-encompassing that it feels like it's taken on a life of its own. He's taken a lot of hits over the years, but this is a class all its own.

Sole's been giving him increasingly worried looks for the past couple hours, little sideways glances like maybe she thinks he won't notice, and he'd be pissed as hell if it wasn't also the only thing keeping him going. She even tried to lend him her shoulder as a crutch at one point, but he'd just gripped his cane harder and glared her off before she could try it. It's bad enough that he's so out of commission; the last thing he wants to do is drag her down, too. She needs to conserve her energy, because he's going to be fuck-all useless if it comes to a combat situation.

She knows it, too, which is probably the only reason she lets him get away with it. But she doesn't look happy about it.

When they get to the boathouse, Mac sees the two drones patrolling the walkway about the same time as they see him, and he breathes a shaky curse as he fumbles out his rifle. Two quick shots take them out before they can raise the alarm to the rest of the hive, but the recoil almost puts him on his ass. He bites his lip to keep from crying out and forces himself to hold still, hoping like hell that they're still far enough away that the rest of the nest wouldn't have heard the shot. Next to him, Sole is equally motionless, her hand on the hilt of the baton and her whole body tensed in high alert.

Nothing. They hold it for another beat of three, and then Sole relaxes back onto her heels and punches him in the shoulder. He cradles his shoulder and scowls at her. "The heck was that for?"

"If you go ass over teakettle just because you're trying to prove something, hotshot, then we are going to have _words._ "

Maybe it's the endorphins, but Mac can't help but grin at her. She's just so- "Maybe I just wanted to get one in before you cleaned house, Boss."

She rolls her eyes and lets her pack slide from her shoulders. "Flattery gets you nowhere, smartass."

There's a couple of remarks he could make in reply, but pretty much all of them would come off as flirting, so he just bites them back and lets his own pack drop to the ground, jerking his chin at the front door. "You want me to circle around back?"

She eyes his knee critically. "Can you even handle steps right now?" He opens his mouth, and she holds up her hand. "Honest answer."

He shuts his mouth again. Thinks about it. Grits his teeth. "Probably not."

She nods, neither disappointed or relieved. "Okay. So here's what we're going to do instead. You're going to post up over there-" She turns slightly to point at a spot a little ways down the road, which is in full view of the front door but still fair enough back that it would take them a minute to catch up to him. "-and take out as many as you can. I'll circle around and come in from the dock while they're coming out towards you and we'll cut them down in the middle."

Mac doesn't state the obvious, which is that this is a plan that even seasoned mercs wouldn't usually undertake in a situation like theirs. He can't move faster than a slow hobble, which means that if she fails to cut down the worst of the crowd from behind, he'll get swarmed faster than he can shoot them off of him. And if he's slow off the mark to get their attention, then they'll just turn and blitz her harder than she can hope to fight back, back in the house where he can't get off a shot. If either of them fuck up, they're both dead.

Mac doesn't intend to fuck up. "Sounds like a plan, boss." He swings his rifle to his shoulder and sights down at the house, trying to get as much a feel for the layout as possible from the busted-open door and the big bay windows. This close to dusk, he can't get a good clear view, but he can still see the flickers of dying light against moving wings on the top floor, enough to get a semi-accurate count. "Looks like five more on the upper story… you could use the stairway to funnel them down to a single point. The queen usually stays back, but if you can get all of the drones down-"

"She'll be easy pickings."

Mac snorts. "I don't know that I'd go that far."

"Easier," Sole amends, and grins at him. "Let's do it."

###### 

Later, Sole hauls the carcasses into a pile on the shady side of the house, where they won't be immediately visible to any random passers-by. "There's no point," she tells him, grunting as she drags the queen's body awkwardly down the steps, "in inviting company by declaring that the place is clear."

Tomorrow she'll likely take them further away, maybe down by the curve of the drainage pipe a ways down river’s edge, but tomorrow they'll also be able to set up defenses in case of unwelcome visitors. Tonight, Sole just lays mines in all the doorways and windows and drags the mattress downstairs to the room with the least windows, the dining room along the lakeside wall that has a back door for quick escape and no clear sightlines to the outside. It's full dark by the time they're done, and they're both too tired and sore to do anything more strenuous than slowly gnaw on some cold rations and stare vacantly at the wall. It's only about seven o'clock, but Mac already feels like he's gone ten rounds with a deathclaw.

It's been a long fucking day.

Sole's the one who cracks first, much to his surprise. He's in his sniper doze, technically watching the back door but mostly just looking at a bunch of nothing, when he hears her yawning and looks over to see her scrubbing her hand over her eyes like a tired little kid. Her usual sunglasses are tucked away safely into the front pocket of her jacket, and even in the low light from the camp lantern Mac can see that the whites of her eyes are bloodshot.

He doesn't know why that detail is the one that gets to him. It's not like he hasn't had ample evidence that she's as human as the rest of them, over the weeks they've worked together: she's been cut, clawed, broken and bruised, and he's had to scrub enough of her blood off his hands to know that she's not exactly the unstoppable Grognak. But she's always bounced back afterwards, made it seem like it didn't really get to her. Looking at her sitting there, broken wrist braced awkwardly against her thigh, the deepening shadows under her eyes that can't all be attributed to shit lighting and prominent bone structure, he's abruptly angry all over again at that fucking ungrateful teamster. Alive because the boss came along and saved his ass, and he just shoved her off like she was trash, when she was the best fucking thing that ever happened to-

Mac takes a deep breath and lets it out slow, exhaling his anger and letting it dissipate into fog in the chill night air. It's over, and it's done, and the guy's not here to pummel, so what would be the point? It wasn't his job to look after the boss, anyway. That's what Mac's here for, and today his track record ain't exactly been stellar.

_Well, better late than never,_ he tells himself, and nudges her gently with the toe of his boot. "Boss. Hey, Boss."

She blinks at him, way too hazy for his liking. Damn, she's fried. "Yeah?"

"You should head to bed. You look like you're about five seconds from passing out."

She looks like she's gonna debate the point on principle for a moment, then visibly gives up with a sigh. "Fuck. You're not wrong."

_No argument? She's worse off than I thought._ "So, get some sleep. I'll keep watch."

"You're just as bad as I am," she says, proving that she's not so fried as all _that._ "You got hit harder in the fight, and the hike hear damn near took you out. You need sleep worse than I do."

She's… probably not wrong. But. "I've been stimmed all to hell. I'm good for another few hours at least, I swear. You go ahead."

She stares at him for a long moment. Looks to the stained double mattress, her bedroll already spread out. Back to him. "Fuck it," she decides. "Let's share. We mined the hell out of this place, and those raiders aren't going to be on our tail anytime soon."

Mac can't help but look at the mattress, though he'd rather look just about anywhere else. Maybe he misunderstood. "Boss?"

Whatever it is that he's feeling must show on his face pretty clear, because Sole snorts a laugh and scrubs a hand over her face. "Jesus, kid, I'm not making a pass. Mattress is plenty big enough for two. We pretty much double up in the field anyway." She grins at him, sudden and bright, worn down at the edges from exhaustion and still fucking charming enough that he's willing to let the 'kid' bullshit pass. "Your virtue is intact, hotshot."

Well, now that's a challenge direct enough he can't ignore, as she damn well knows. He gives her a halfhearted glare. "If you kick, I'm kickin' back."

"Not with that knee you're not," she says, and chuckles low when he makes a halfhearted swipe at the back of her head. "Seriously though, I can get the other mattress if you-"

"Just go to bed," he sighs, and is briefly mortified by his interruption until she just grins at him and goes. Doesn't even bother kicking off her boots so he doesn't either, blows out the lantern and stumble-crawls onto the mattress next to her. It takes a bit of wriggling for both of them to make it safely under the blankets, but then Mac rolls awkwardly to put his back to her, propping his knee into the closest thing to a comfortable position he can and facing out over the rest of the room. Just this once, he's going to be the one standing in between her and the rest of the world. Just until she's herself again.

He feels Sole wriggling around behind him, rolling over to give him him her back. Still not touching, but close enough that he can feel the heat leaching across the empty air between them. Enough that he knows instinctively, blindly where she is - and so he closes his eyes and lets himself go down.

_Tomorrow,_ he thinks, hazily aware of the smell of her, leather and sweat and gun oil. _Tomorrow we get the second mattress down here, and we'll go back to normal._

###### 

The next morning is surprisingly un-awkward, all things considered. Sole wakes up before him and murmurs to him to stay down if he likes, giving his shoulder a quick squeeze as she clambers over to him to go outside and relieve herself. He lays there drowsing for a while, listening to her moving around the house and disarming the mines on the main entry points. It's only when he hears the crackle of a fire being started that he reluctantly hauls himself out of the warm covers, shivering in the early-morning chill and flipping the collar of his coat up as high as it will go. If there's a fire going, then Sole's gonna be thinking about breakfast, which means it's about time for him to intervene.

He finds her going through their stash of packaged food with a considering eye and sends her very firmly away, taking over the cookpot to her half-hearted grumbling. They’ve got stores enough to last them another couple days, maybe, but they’re going to want to stock up on some fresh food while they’ve got the chance. See if they can bait some radstag, maybe. Or there might be fish in the river. He’ll have to suggest it to the boss later.

Speak of the devil, and she appears, ambling up the side path from the river a few minutes later, right as he’s dishing out breakfast and about to call her. She’s like a stray cat, that way: goes off on her own but you damn well better believe she’ll show up when there’s food. Mac hides a smile and hands the plate over to her, eyeing the freshly-scrubbed pallor of her skin and the fine tremble of a shiver in her hands. “So how cold is the water, exactly?”

“Fuckin’ freezing,” she says, sending him a half-smile, and clutches her plate close to her chest. “This hits the spot. Thanks.”

“Better than the alternative,” he says cheekily, and laughs as she shoves at his shoulder, rocking him sideways on the decrepit porch swing they dubiously decided to entrust with their weight. “Seriously though, was it worth it?”

“You have _no_ idea.” She leaves her plate balanced on her knee long enough to scratch her short nails through the soft red stubble above her ear. “What I really want to do is get this peach fuzz down to something manageable, but I don’t think my wrist is up to the challenge.”

“I dunno, Boss, you did a pretty nice job on those bloodbugs last night.”

“That wasn’t exactly detail work, if you know what I mean.” She ruefully holds up her splinted wrist. “Would you trust me with a straight razor at your throat?”

_Of course,_ he thinks, immediately and viscerally, and shoves a bite of food in his mouth to cover his embarrassment at the strength of his reaction. She’s had his life in her hands enough times, is all. And she’s pretty fucking handy with a blade.

He chews and swallows, which gives him enough time to say easily, “Nah, can’t blame you. If you want some help with that later, I have had a fair bit of practice with a razor myself.”

She grins. “Wouldn’t know it to look at you, Scruff McGruff.”

He may not know what she’s referring to, but he can catch an insult when it’s tossed his way, and he rolls his eyes at her for the trouble. “Hey, if you don’t want the help-”

“Nah, I’ll probably take you up on it later.” She goes back to attacking her food. “It’s starting to get long enough to properly bug me.”

He scratches at his jaw. Yeah, way too long since he’s had a chance to shave. “I know what you mean.”

###### 

They split back up after breakfast, Sole to dress the bloodbug carcasses and haul them far enough away that they won’t attract predators, and Mac to go through their gear and clean up. He still can’t get around so hot - another day and a final stimpak after lunch, he figures, and his knee’ll be good enough for government work - but it’s enough to do some laundry, so he hauls all their spare clothes down to the water’s edge and gets to work. And then, after a quick look around to make sure she’s still gone, he strips down and scrubs himself, too. He’s fucking rank, road dirt and fear-sweat and blood. The boss probably would’ve shoved him in a pond days ago if she wasn’t just as bad.

The harsh laundry soap burns a little going over some of his nicks and cuts, but he ducks under and rinses off as fast as possible, shivering and cursing Sole for scrubbing up first and making him think he could handle it. He finishes fast and scrambles into his least-damp set of clothes, eyeing the tattered edges of his coat as he spreads it out over the railing with the rest. He’s going to have to replace that soon; one good tug and the whole fucking thing’s going to unravel up the back. Put that on the list with his _fucking_ bedroll, apparently. It’s not like Sole’s not seeing to his income just fine, it’s just- fuck. Can’t win for losing, some days.

He puts a pot of water on to heat over the fire and sharpens up his knife while he waits. When it’s done he lathers up, groaning in pleasure at the feeling of hot water on his skin and then shivering all the harder as the blade peels away the remaining stubble. He wipes the rest of the lather up with a rag and makes a face at himself in the little hand mirror he scrounged from the downstairs bathroom. He should probably just let it go and turn into a proper beard, especially with winter coming on, but vanity is a hell of a mistress. A goatee makes him look older, but it tends to come in patchy over his jaw, which just makes him look like he’s trying too hard. No thanks. He’s got enough trouble getting people to take him seriously as it is.

He’s all done cleaning up after himself and is giving his rifle a going-over by the time the boss gets back, sweaty and half-covered in bloodbug slime. She’s balancing a chem cooler against her hip with her good hand, looking tremendously pleased with herself. “Looks like you had a productive morning,” he calls, and she grins at him and drops the cooler at his feet. It’s substantially cleaner than she is, with watermarks up the sides like it’s been lying half-submerged.

“The kids who had this place before left some notes about a stash, so I figured I’d look around while I was down there, hit the jackpot halfway up a drain pipe.”

“Yeah?” His hands are covered in gun oil, so he can’t open it up and take a look, but he peers at it interestedly. “What’s in it?”

“More inhalers than I’ve seen in one place outside of a head shop,” she says smugly. “They must’ve been cooking the dung off that brahmin in the front yard for- months, at least. Probably planning on getting up to Goodneighbor in the cold season.”

And never made it, obviously. “What happened?”

She pauses and frowns at him, her lips pursed. “You- oh, I guess you never made it upstairs.”

He gestures ruefully at his knee. “Maybe tomorrow.”

“Right. Uh.” She’s uncharacteristically hesitant, but still nods towards the upper story of the house. “One of them’s upstairs. Found the other near the stash.”

Mac can’t entirely help his glance upwards towards the bedroom window. “Ah.”

“Yeah.” She rubs the back of her neck. “Think the bloodbugs were using the drainpipe as a hatchery, and then when they went back to retrieve the cooler-”

“They killed him and followed his scent trail back,” Mac finished with a sigh. “Rough.”

She relaxes ever-so-slightly, and it’s only then that he realizes she’d tensed up, waiting his answer. Worried he’d be angry about them taking her stash? Stupid. They’re fucking dead, aren’t they? Not like they’re using it anymore.

“Yeah, well. Their loss, our gain, et cetera.” She nudges at the cooler with her boot. “Forget scavenging, this’ll get us through the next couple of traders, easy.”

He cocks his head. “Better to spend it in Goodneighbor,” he says, doing some quick calculations. Yeah, the going rate is definitely better. “Scav price is better on the road ‘cause everyone sells the good shit in the city, but they’ll pay a premium for jet up in the city ‘cause they don’t have as much access to homegrown like settlers do. Plus, ghouls need double or triple the dose. Higher demand.”

It’s only after he finishes talking that he realizes that maybe he shouldn’t have jumped in to correct the boss, but she just gives him an appraising look in return that warms him right down to his toes. He ducks his head down to focus on his rifle to hide his face, but he’s sure she saw it anyway. He can’t lie worth a damn, never much had the talent for it. Stupid.

Mercifully, she doesn’t call attention to it, only says, “Good call. We’ll focus on clearing out the scav first, then, and only go to the chems if we’re running low.” She gives him a rueful look. “Plus, jet’s a little easier to carry. Probably better to get rid of the heavy stuff first.”

This time, it’s easier to grin back. “You said it, not me.”

“You have made your opinions on overstuffed packs _very_ clear, believe me.” She looks down at herself and makes a face. “Ugh. I am officially wearing way more insides on the outside than any person should have to face before dinner. I’m gonna brave the water again, see if I can’t get some of this shit scrubbed offa me.”

_This,_ he can help with. He points at the side railing. “There’s some clean clothes when you’re done. Still probably a little damp, but-”

He stops at the half-step she takes up onto the porch steps, arms outstretched like she was gonna come hug him or something until she thought better of it. “I could fuckin’ kiss you, Robert MacCready,” she says fervently. “Is the soap still over there too?”

“Uh,” he says, and hopes to hell that he’s not blushing, because that would be just about the most embarrassing thing to ever happen to him. And that’s counting the time that Lucy walked in on him with pants off and his fingers up his- “No, I was using it to shave. Should be right by the fire- yeah, there,” he says, as she unerringly pivots to pick it up. “Just rinse the dust off and it’s good to go.”

“Thanks,” she says, and gestures vaguely at his face. “Lookin’ good, there. Almost forgot what you looked like after a trim.”

“It’s been a _week,_ ” he says, rolling his eyes, but he can’t help the hand he runs over his newly-smooth jaw, preening a little at the compliment. Okay, so only _most_ of his trim had been about making himself look older. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t want to clean up a little for her, too. “But thanks.” And then, because he can’t keep his dumb mouth shut: “If you still want some help with a trim, I’ve got some time.”

She squints up at him. “If you’re serious about it, then sure.”

He’s sort of inclined to be offended - why _wouldn’t_ he be - but he gets it. She’s the boss, and more than that, she’s the kind of person people have a hard time telling no. He’s seen her use that to her advantage plenty of times, and it’s- oddly touching that she’s being careful about it now. Careful about _him._ It lends an edge of indulgence to his teasing, “C’mon, Boss. You ever known me _not_ to be serious?”

The answering quirk at the corner of her mouth sends warmth down into his belly. “You want that list alphabetically or in chronological order?”

He rolls his eyes and picks up the bottle of gun oil. “Oh, go get clean.” Then he realizes it came out as an order and tries to backpedal. “I mean-”

She just grins and snaps the crispest salute he’s ever seen, leaving him gaping. “Sir, yes, sir!” she says smartly, and heads off around the side of the house, still chuckling faintly to herself.

He stares after her for a moment, wondering… Then he shakes his head and goes back to polishing his rifle. He’s got enough to worry about without borrowing more trouble about shit that’s none of his business.

###### 

An hour later, Mac realizes that he might have made a slight tactical error in judgement.

It’s not that he promised something he couldn’t deliver: he’s played barber more times than he can count, both before and after leaving Little Lamplight. He can’t do any fancy cuts or anything, not like the rich folk in the stands like to get, but he’s got a sniper’s steady hand and he knows how to keep an edge on a blade, which is half the battle. And it’s not like Sole’s looking for anything fancy: someone else already made the trim, months ago when she first got it shaved, and all he’s got to do is take off the stubble.

But it’s- more distracting then he’d really anticipated, doing something like that for the boss. Not her fault; she’s sitting perfectly still on the porch steps, holding the rest of her hair helpfully out of his way. Mac’s the one who’s having trouble focusing, which is a bad fuckin’ idea when he’s got a damn sharp blade next to her skin. She might have been better off trying to handle it herself.

He’s just not used to… being this close to someone. Literally, he means. The nights they've slept doubled up, that’s the closest he’s been to someone for longer than it took to get through a crowded bar since Lucy died, and that's been weird enough. At least then he's been able to go to sleep quickly, with her right behind him but not- not this close. Not _touching._

And it’s impossible _not_ to touch, not with how close they’re sitting. He tried to put her on the stool he was using to prop up his foot while he was cooking breakfast, but she wouldn’t hear of him standing on his bum knee for so long, so they arrange themselves on the front porch steps, her perched comfortably one step below him with his stretched out on either side of her. He tries not to push his luck, but there’s only so much he can keep his hands to himself, considering the task at hand. Sole doesn’t seem to take it personally, thank fuck, just tilts her head obligingly this way and that at his guiding nudge and shifts automatically to take his weight when he forgets himself and uses her shoulder as a brace to get at a particularly tricky spot. He mutters an apology, but she just laughs a little under her breath and gives his good knee a companionable squeeze with her free hand.

It’s awkward as fuck, but when it’s done he wipes the rest of the rest of the lather away with a hot rag and can’t help but admire his handiwork. He didn’t take it quite down to the skin - didn’t trust himself, not with just a boot knife instead of a straight razor and a lot less willing to risk the nick when it’s not his skin on the line - but he got it damn close, just the faintest red-gold shadow on her skin. She pulls the rest of her hair, darkened still to auburn from the wet, back into a ponytail with impatient hands and runs her palm over the side of her head. She tilts her head back to give him an upside-down grin.

“You do good work, hotshot.”

“Darn right I do,” he says, instead of the _thanks_ that wants to stutter out of his mouth. The back of his neck goes a little hot at the praise, but he thinks he handles it pretty well, gives her a cocky smirk that has her turning her head to hide her snort.

The movement draws his eye to the stitches in her cheek, which are starting to pull tight as the cut heals up. He reaches out instinctively and then freezes with his fingers a couple inches away from her face, awkwardly. “You, uh. You should get those out soon.”

“Yeah, I’ve probably left them too long.” She makes a face and straightens up, pulling out of contact with him. Cold air hits him on the inside of his knees and calves, where they’d been braced around her hips and soaking up her ever-present warmth. He stifles a shiver and wipes his hands off on the rag, making sure to catch the last flakes of dried soap on the backs of his hands that are starting to itch. “The last thing I want is to have it heal up around them and have to cut them out again.”

It’s a valid concern, especially with all the stimpaks she’s had recently. The one in her shoulder from a few days back is probably already closed up, though that one was shallow, not much worse than a bad scrape. He wants to get one last dose in her tonight to get her wrist back up to fighting trim tomorrow, but that means that-

“You want me to take ‘em out, Boss?” She squeezes his good ankle through his boot, and that’s all the _yes_ he needs. “C’mon, then, switch.”

If he thought having her sit in between his knees was awkward, it’s nothing in comparison to kneeling between _her_ legs, hunched over her like some kinda gargoyle and shifting awkwardly to let his right knee take most of his weight. She makes it easy on him, holding perfectly still with her hands braced on the porch behind her and face tilted helpfully to the light, but he still has to wrap his hand around her jaw to hold her face steady. A potential nick on the back of her head is one thing, but the last thing he wants to do is add to her motley collection of scars because his hand slipped.

His hand doesn’t slip. He cuts the knots free carefully, one at a time, then slides his knife back into his boot and sets about plucking the stitches free. It probably hurts, but the only reaction she gives as he tugs them loose is the slightest catch of her breath. He can probably only hear it because he's so close, close enough that he feels the wash of her exhale against his cheek when she lets it out slow as he pulls the last thread out, a bare inch below her eye.

"There," he says, and lets himself to rub the pad of his thumb down the line of her scar just once before he drops his hand away, rocking back on his heels. "All better."

She grins up at him, and he's still close, too close. Especially if she's going to be smiling at him like that, damn it. "Thanks, Doc. Think I'm going to live?"

He can't help the snort of laughter that he gives at that. She's the original survivor. He might worry over her, 'cause she's the boss and that's his job, but in the general run of things-

"I think you'll manage," he says, and finally manages to rock back onto his heels. His bum knee twinges a protest, but he ignores it. He's about due for another stimpak in a few hours, anyway. "Anything else you got for me while we're playing doctor? Want me to take a look at that wrist?"

She holds it up for his inspection. It's still wrapped and braced, but even so he can see that the swelling's all but gone, and when she wriggles her fingers there's no hesitation in the movement, no sign of discomfort. "I think I'm gonna leave the brace on till tomorrow, but after that the Pip-boy should cover it for the next few days until it's back to normal."

He's got to admit the wisdom of that - he still remembers wearing the damn thing while they were hunting out the ghouls, and it's the next best thing to a cast all by itself. Plus it's got the medical feeds on it. Not that she'll pay attention, but it's the principal of the thing.

"You're damn lucky you weren't wearing that thing during the firefight," he says. “I know you’ve put a couple of bullet holes in it already, but…”

“There’s a limit to what even Vault-Tec engineering can withstand,” she finishes, with a wry smile. “Yeah, I know. I’m not too eager to test the limits anytime soon. It’s not like they’re easy to replace.”

It occurs to him that he’s still somewhat straddling her, and she’s still just sitting there easy as anything, leaning back on her hands and chatting like he’s not massively in breach of her personal space. He scrambles to his feet, trying not to look like he’s scrambling, and then has to grab the railing for balance when his knee threatens to give out. Stupid fuckin’- “Yeah, no kidding. Try prying one of those off a vaultie, see how far you get. Where’d you pick yours up, anyway?”

“How’d you know I didn’t get it from a vault?”

Her voice is mild, and he glances back down at her fast, worried that maybe he’d overstepped - he’s known her long enough now to realize that she’s at her most dangerous when she goes over all quiet and polite. But there’s only simple curiosity on her face as she looks up at him, like she genuinely just wants to know how he came to his conclusion. Which is stupid, ‘cause it’s not like he’s thought about it much. Just, _from a vault, maybe,_ before he even knew her name, but even at the time he’d thought she didn’t have the green on her to be a vaultie. Kicked out when she came of age, maybe, like he’d been - ten or twelve years on your own’ll knock the green right off, if you survive - but she doesn’t read like someone who grew up nice and safe until it all went wrong. She reads like someone who’s had to struggle for every scrap since she was old enough to walk. A survivor, born and bred down to the bone.

He can’t explain that to her. He just can’t. “Just a hunch,” he says with a shrug.

“Huh. You know you’re the first person to see the Pip-boy and assume I _wasn’t_ a vaultie? It’s the teeth, isn’t it? Everyone keeps telling me my teeth are too good for a scavver.”

She does have good teeth, white and straight and strong: no holes, no chem stains, no rad rot. Still, a farmer has access to better food. She might have come up on one of the local settlements, before she left for a time. “Plus, you can buy a whole roomful of chems for the cost of one of those things. Most vaulties don’t wear ‘em outside, and they’re damn near impossible to find on the market.”

“So what you’re saying,” Sole says, grinning now, “is that I’m poor.”

“What I’m saying is _nobody’s_ that rich. You either got it in a vault, or you took it off someone with enough money to have gotten it the hard way.”

“And you assume it was the latter,” she says. “MacCready, I think that might have been the finest compliment you’ve ever paid me.”

That- wasn’t how he meant it, but he looks away from her grin, feeling the back of his neck go hot again. “Aww, shut it.”

She snorts, and when he looks back she’s rolling to her feet, with a grace he can’t help but envy. “Well, for the record, while I am touched by your confidence in me, I actually got it from the usual place.”

“You grew up in a vault?” He can feel his forehead wrinkling as he considers it. “Or, wait, did you scav it out of a vault?”

“Ding ding ding! Gold star, head of the class.”

Yeah, that fits more with the Sole he knows. “Good job, Boss. Those are hard as f-heck to crack.”

“Well,” she says, and only now does a cloud pass across her face, “I did have someone let me in.”

A previous partner, he thinks, someone she lost. It’s not the first time he’s had the thought, but it is the first time she’s confirmed it so clearly. He wonders who they were to her: family, friend, lover, partner in crime? Did they part ways amicably, or did she lose them to a grave? Or- well, this is the Commonwealth. Maybe the Institute took them.

“Lemme let you in on a little secret, Boss,” he says, and she blinks and looks over at him. Leans in conspiratorially when he gestures, a tiny smile quirking at the corner of her mouth. “There’s nobody here but you’n me. You’re free to take all the credit.”

“Is that so?” She smiles back challengingly. Still leaning in, almost as close as he’d been taking the stitches out of her cheek. “Are you saying I need to tell a better story if I expect to keep you entertained?”

He tamps down on the urge to look away and tips his chin to meet her gaze. She’s so rarely without her shades that the bright clear green of her eyes is almost startling. “I’m saying if you don’t sing your own praises, Boss, nobody’s gonna do it for you.”

“Aw, buddy, I thought that’s what I kept you around for,” she says, and then abruptly laughs at the sour expression he makes. She eases back, just a few inches, but it’s enough to lessen the pressing warmth of her body so close to his. He lets out a slow breath, not sure if he’s relieved or disappointed at the sudden return of his personal space. “Listen, thanks for the extra pair of hands. I’m thinking about trying my hand with that fishing pole I found in the boat shed, what do you think about some seafood for dinner?”

“I think you better drag out that dose of Rad-X if you want to eat anything that came out of the water,” he retorts, but then relents and adds, “It _would_ be nice to eat something other than rations for a change.”

“You’n me both, bud.” She taps her fingers against her belt restlessly, staring off into blank air over his shoulder. It’s her planning expression, and Mac waits patiently for whatever her twisty brain is gonna pop out next. “I saw radstag tracks when I was dumping the bloodbug remains. We could go hunting tomorrow morning, get enough meat to feed us for another week or two on the road.”

That does sound good, but- “Shouldn’t we get moving towards Greentop?”

“It’ll still be there in a few days,” she says, amused. “And we need to take a couple days before we get moving, anyway.” She nods to his knee. “That’s still shakier than I’d like.”

The implication that he’s slowing them down, however true, tightens his shoulders. “I’m fine, Boss. You don’t have to hold up on my-”

“MacCready.” Her steady voice cuts through his protest, and he looks mutely to her. She shakes her head, still smiling faintly. “Don’t be such a hero, hotshot. We’re not in a hurry, and even if we were I’d still care a whole lot more about getting there in one piece.”

It still rankles, but she’s not wrong. And if nothing else, he can trust her to have considered all the angles before she made the call. She wouldn’t do it out of sentimentality. Maybe that should bother him, but it’s obscurely reassuring. She can be careless with her own personal safety, but she’s got the best survival instinct of anyone he’s ever met.

“Okay,” he relents. “Yeah. That sounds good.”

Her smile is blinding. “Good! Because I can’t cook jerky to save my life.” She leans in, and for a breathtaking moment he thinks that maybe- but she just hooks a hand around the back of his neck and gives it a squeeze. “Trust me, hotshot. I know what I’m doing.”

She doesn’t let go immediately, and he relaxes back into her grip, almost on reflex. Sole’s got a plan. He might not have any idea what she’s planning, but it doesn’t matter. She knows what she’s doing, and that’s good enough for him. “You got it, Boss.”


	8. Chapter 8

The next couple days are some of the most relaxing Mac’s had in... a while. Who the fuck knows how long, really. He doesn’t know the last time he’s had the opportunity to do nothing - or as close to nothing as he can stand to do, anyway. He still whiles away the hours with chores: cleaning weapons, cooking some food, mending some clothes - basic shit, in other words. He’s never been real good at just sitting around doing nothing. Better to have something to occupy his hands.

Speaking of which, the _real_ advantage of the downtime is the privacy. There’s certain needs you can’t take care of when you’re on the road and living in someone’s pocket all the time, and Mac’s been feeling the itch pretty bad, the last day or two. A hard hike and an empty belly usually cut down the urge no problem, but the boss has them well-fed and moving slow ever since they left that robot greenhouse, and damn near sharing a bedroll with someone hasn’t much helped. She’s not what you’d call properly pretty, the boss ain’t, but she’s fit as hell and she likes to put her hands on him. It’s distracting.

Besides. It’s not like she’s not doing the same damn thing. Considering how cold that fucking river is just now, there’s no way she’s taking a half-hour or more for a bath just to scrub up. He doesn’t say anything, anymore than she says anything about how long it takes him to take a piss in the morning. Pragmatic woman, the boss. That kinda shit can get awkward, two people travelling together. Good to know she’s too smart to fall into that trap.

And it’s not like he spends all of his time jerking off, either. (His wrist would be fucked worse than hers was, else. He’s not fucking sixteen anymore.) He makes some jerky out of a radstag the boss brings down and butchers for him the first morning, marinates it the first day and leaves it to dry. He catches up on the mending, tries to get the ends of his coat looking a little less ragged (a losing proposition) and stitches back up the seam in his pants that the boss cut when she was looking to his knee. And then, because her glove’s burning a hole in his pocket, he stitches that back together too, going a lot slower and more careful with the fine-grain leather than he did with his own stuff. His pants are a size too big and more patch than not at this point anyway, but her gloves are good-quality leather, well-oiled and stitched to fit, and damned if he’s going to be the reason she has to get a replacement. She’s always been real careful with the stuff she considers hers; the least he can do is provide the same.

Aside from her hunting trip the first morning and a bit of weapons maintenance, the boss pretty much spends her time fishing off the back dock. Which, while also actually providing them with most of their meals, mostly seems to be an excuse to play Red Menace on her Pip-boy and cut a swathe through the bottles of beer the former owners of the house left behind. Not that he can blame her. Besides, she’s never too stingy to share, and both of them end up pretty toasted the first night, stumbling back to their bedrolls without getting around to drag the second mattress down from upstairs. They’re a little more careful on day two, but hangovers aren’t much of a concern and Sole finds a bottle of whiskey in the boathouse, so that night ends up being pretty much a repeat of the first. Mac wakes up the next morning, Sole’s cheek pressed tight between his shoulderblades and one heavy boot slung carelessly across his leg, and smiles into his pillow.

He’s had better days. But it’s been a while.

The third night, they don’t even bother with excuses. Mac’s got them lined up, if he needs them - why bother if they’re leaving the next day, his knee’s still a little shaky to be hauling something heavy down a flight of stairs, it’s cold as fuck out there and they could both use the warmth - but Sole just unrolls her bedroll onto one side of the mattress without comment, in the middle of some improbable story about going hand-to-hand with an angry deathclaw. Businesslike, like there’s no question they’d do anything else. Mac lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding and follows suit.

“I’m sorry to see the last of this place,” the boss tells him the next morning, filling up her pack with fast, practiced hands. “I haven’t relaxed this much in… fuck, who even knows. A while.”

“Yeah." It's January 1, the first of the year, and the air outside is crisp and clean, like even the Commonwealth wants to try for a fresh start. If he was back in Goodneighbor, everyone would still be drunk right now, giving New Year's toasts left and right. _Take what you want to carry, and leave the rest behind._ Out here, Mac looks at the easy curve of the boss's smile and knows it's not that simple. “It’s been a good time.”

###### 

It’s a hard two days of hiking to get them to Greentop, and Sole breaks away from the roads at long last, taking them cross-country to avoid the super mutants who’ve nested in the little strip of a nearby town. “Gonna have to do something about them at some point,” she says that evening, huddled around their bedrolls in the empty bus they decided to hole up in for the night. No place to set a fire, but they wouldn’t risk the smoke anyway, not with the odds they’ll end up inviting unwanted company. “This is a fucking main road. If we’re going to ask these fine folk to fly the flag-”

He makes a face at her semi-unconscious alliteration, and she grins at him shamelessly.

“-then we need to make sure the roads are clear. Supplies, trade, reinforcements - most of what we’ve got is going to be coming from the west.”

Mac leans back on his hands and stretches his legs lazily out in front of him. “Which puts them right onto the muties’ doorstep.”

The toe of his boot knocks against her hip, and she wraps a hand around his ankle absently to hold him still. “Not a position any caravanner’s gonna be happy to find themself in,” she says. “Or anyone else, for that matter.”

Yeah, no kidding. Probably why the farms up here aren’t seeing much in the way of trade in the first place. That, or the road down to Bunker Hill - flip a coin, he figures, they’re gonna be asked to clear one or the other out. “You want us to push it? Take ‘em out now?”

“Not that I don’t appreciate the enthusiasm, hotshot, but I think that’s the kind of shit that better needs a team.”

“We have those?” he says, deliberately cheeky, just to earn the flash of a grin she sends his way.

“Preston’s taking care of the recruitment,” she says. “He’s the nice one, so I leave that shit to him. When he’s got enough people who know one end of a rifle from the other, then we’ll think about clearing the road.” She tips him an arch look over the tops of her shades. “That alright with you, your highness?”

He grins back, ignoring the flush of warmth in his chest that he can’t blame on booze. “I dunno, Boss. You seem pretty nice to me.”

She just laughs, low and sweet, and gives his ankle a squeeze he can just barely feel through the too-thin leather of his boots. “You haven’t seen me when I get mad,” she says, teasing. “C’mon, let’s cut the chatter. We’ve got an early morning tomorrow.”

He lets her get away with it, watches her curl up in her bedroll and sits watch near the open door, rifle ready and steady in his hands, but he doesn’t stop thinking about it, either. The thing is, the thing she’s either forgetting or pretending to forget, is that he’s seen her mad, real and proper mad, not so very long ago. With that raider, the one that took out his knee. She didn’t look unfriendly, didn’t stop smiling even the once, and he might not’ve been able to hear her across the way but he’d bet a shiny nickel she sounded just as nice as could be, but she was fuckin’ _furious._ Some people get big and loud when they get pissed, wave their hands around and make a fuss, but others, well, others just go cold and quiet. Those’re the real dangerous ones, in his experience. Those are the ones that’ll fuck up your day, your week, your entire goddamn life.

Mac plays back the memory of her breaking that raider’s knee and smiles. Wouldn’t want to get on her bad side, that’s for fucking sure. But he thinks she’s plenty nice, when it counts.

###### 

The next day is pretty much nothing but delays. First, they spend most of the morning tippy-toeing past a big medical building that’s absolutely _lousy_ with ferals, which is not his favorite way to spend a minute, much less three solid hours. (“Definitely gotta do something about those,” the boss whispers to him, and he coughs on a laugh, eyeing the withered one that looks damn near six feet tall napping in the sunlight. “Yeah, boss, you and what freakin’ army?”)

And then they’re barely past _that_ gauntlet when the boss takes them haring off road, chasing some distress signal she picks up on her Pip-boy. Mac maybe rolls his eyes a little, but hell. Not his mission, not his problem. The boss wants to chase ghosts, he’ll follow behind. All he’s here to do is shoot things, and when they finally track the signal back to the source, it’s pretty clear his combat skills are a while past being needed. The broken foundation of a house, blown to hell and down to nothing more than half a wall and a couple window frames, might’ve been a war zone when that Brotherhood knight blew his power armor, but the smell of boomstick powder and rad rot is already fading. They’re a ways too late to be saving anyone.

“Knight Varham,” Sole reads off. She’s got a BOS holotag in her hands, pulled off the neck of the man in the power armor frame lying in a corner, body ragdolled against a desk like he’d been blown there by the explosion. Deliberate suicide, or just couldn’t get away fast enough? The body’s mostly rot in that power armor, so it’s hard to tell if there was some injury that might’ve complicated the matter. “Huh. I didn’t know there was a Brotherhood team up this far.”

He snorts. “Well, I don’t think there’s much of one anymore.” She shoots him a look. “What?”

She looks away rather than answer, rolling the body and prying open the back of the damaged frame. Doing her usual scrap-and-salvage routine, maybe, but more likely looking for the black box. Might shed some light on what happened here. Mac leaves her to it and stands guard near where the door used to be. At least some mutie won’t sneak up on them while she’s playing detective.

“I met a Paladin down in Concord, a while back,” she says, a minute later. He can’t see her face, hunched over the frame, but her voice is about as neutral as it ever is. “He seemed to think there weren’t any others in the Commonwealth.”

Mac judiciously decides not to step into _that_ particular kettle of worms, though he desperately wants to know how she got a soldier of that kind of rank to tell her about BOS deployment. He might have wondered at her too-practiced salute the other morning, but her general willingness to steal, maim, and kill for caps doesn’t really make her Brotherhood material.

Ah, well, another mystery to add to the list. _She’s got some stories on her, you always knew that._ “He wouldn’t necessarily know,” he says, instead. “Those soldier types aren’t exactly great at communicating, if you know what I mean.”

She snorts a laugh, more bitter than anything. “You don’t know the half of it.” Her seeking fingers find the small square plate of the unit’s cover panel, down near the base of the spine. He watches her struggle to brace the plated shoulder for a moment before he sighs and goes over to grab it. She flashes him a smile in thanks and sets to work with her omnipresent screwdriver. “Worse than spies, honestly. At least then you’ve got opsec rules telling you to keep your mouth shut. Soldiers just don’t bother to ask.”

Mac eyes her a little askance, spreading his feet to better hold up the weight of the power armor frame. “You seem to know a lot about it, Boss.”

She doesn’t answer for a minute, as she peels open the cover plate and delicately pries loose the holotape from the black box. It doesn’t look too worse for the wear, surprisingly. Those pre-War folks sure as shit knew how to build to last. “I’ve known a few soldiers in my time,” she says, finally. “It breeds a certain kind of person. The flag you’re flying doesn’t mean much, in the end. You know?”

Mac’s never fought for anything but family or caps since he was sixteen years old and he doubts he ever will again, but when the boss looks up at him, the weight of her expectant gaze heavy even through the shades, he nods anyway. “Sure, Boss,” he says, and reaches out, very carefully, to give her shoulder a squeeze. “I know exactly what you mean.”

###### 

Whatever’s on the black box recording, Mac never finds out: the boss listens to it during dinner that night, the volume turned down low enough that all he can hear is an indistinguishable blur of panicked voices. Last words, probably. Sole listens to it over and over, looking for some nuance or detail that she doesn’t seem to find, and Mac leaves her to it, just makes sure she actually eats her portion before he goes back to his own bedroll to write another letter to Duncan. Carefully edited, of course, for little eyes and little ears, but still. At least there’s a lot more he can tell, travelling out here with the Boss, than he ever had with the Gunners. Dangerous, the boss might be, but she’s not that kind of dirty and he’s thankful for that every goddamn day.

If she’s quiet the next day, well, they don’t tend to talk much on the road at the best of times, and definitely not when the area’s so densely packed with hostiles. Mac doesn’t bug her about it, just keeps his hands on his rifle and his eyes on the road, and tries not to think about how warm her blankets were when they traded watch in the middle of the night, the way her copper-and-cordite smell clung to his clothes this morning when he got up. He never even unpacked his own bedroll, halfway daring her to say something about it, but she was either too distracted or didn’t care either way. Mac’s not sure which he’d rather, honestly. Mostly he doesn’t want to think about it.

Any road, they’re both more or less back to normal by the time they make it to Greentop that afternoon, him falling back to her heels, watching her greet the husband and wife that run the place with her usual easy charm and nodding awkwardly when she introduces him. No explanation, just, “This is MacCready, he’s with me,” and they nod back at him, friendly and open in a way he doesn’t entirely trust.

Farmers, man. Half of ‘em think the world’s out to get them, and half think the world just wants to be your friend. It’s fuckin’ weird.

Their late lunch is riddled with more unpleasant socializing, followed by the husband taking them on a tour of the greenhouse ( _another_ greenhouse, what the hell), extolling the virtues of their stock while the boss nods attentively and Mac tries not to fall asleep on his feet. Eventually, though, they withdraw back to the house to talk business, and Mac snaps back into watchfulness, giving the boss his full attention. Not like she really needs him much for this part, either, but at least they’re talking about something he can understand.

The terms are simple enough, once they get past the usual bullshit enough to talk about it straight. Apparently there’s an old army building along the road south that’s gotten infested with ferals, and they want him and Sole to go clean it out. Not Mac’s favorite, for obvious reasons, but still, it’s exactly the kind of merc work he’s done before, and more straightforward than most. And wonder of fucking wonders, there’s even a payday waiting for them at the end.

“Before the ferals it was raiders, you know, and nobody was willing to do jack shit about those either. It’s bullshit that mercs won’t take the damn contract, but if the Minutemen are back and willing to pick up the slack, then more power to ya, I say,” the husband says forcefully. “We haven’t been able to get goods up from the city in six months. You clean out those ferals, and I know Deb down at Bunker Hill’ll have a shiny bag of caps for you.”

“That does sound good,” the boss says, lounging back in her chair. A half-smoked cigarette dangles between her fingers, and if you didn’t know better you’d think she was entirely relaxed. Leaning against the wall a bit behind her, he’s angled just right to see behind those shades, where she’s giving the farmers a slit-eyed look of concentration, that clever brain of hers playing out all the angles. Mac’s more than happy to just sit back and watch her work. “But if we’re heading south for payment, how do we let you know when it’s done?”

“We’ll know soon enough when the next caravan comes through,” the wife laughs, patting her husband’s knee. Her good mood is genuine, if Mac has any read on her at all. The husband’s the blustery type, but she’s the kind who tends not to take things too seriously. Probably makes for a good marriage, but Mac bets they get swindled by traders all the damn time. “Unless you’re worried about us joining the Minutemen? We’re happy to sign up now, seein’ as how you folk are willing to put in the time when the mercs won’t, but I’ll tell you now I don’t think we’ve got much to offer. We’re shorthanded as it is. Not a lot of work we can spare to send people out for patrol, or anything.”

Sole’s smile is slow and easy, and only looks wolfish around the corners if you know her. “Why don’t you let me worry about that,” she says. Mac hears the note of triumph in her voice and thinks about her grand plans, the network of her influence stretching slow and steady across the entire Commonwealth. “I think we can manage to work something out.”

###### 

They don’t have to set a watch that night, bunking down safe and sound in the canning shed off the main house, and Mac doesn’t hesitate before he unrolls his own bedroll for the first time in three days and settles in for sleep as soon as they’re done with dinner. It’s going to be a damn early morning tomorrow, if he knows the boss, and he’s damn well going to take advantage to having an uninterrupted night of rest while it’s on offer. Even if it means that he won’t have the pleasure of sliding between her body-warmed blankets, the smell of her in his nose and the knowledge that she’s looking out for him till morning.

He’s not sure what it is that wakes him, when it happens - a sound maybe, or some sense of motion. Something out of place in their cozy little nest of bedrolls and narrow, candlelit walls. When he blinks his eyes open into the semi-dark, it’s to see Sole stepping carefully over to him towards the door, her cap pulled down low over her eyes and her jacket slung loose over her shoulders. Mac squints up at her.

“Boss?”

“Just going for a piss,” she murmurs, “go back to sleep,” but he’s waking up more every moment, and it’s hard to miss the rifle slung across her back.

“I don’t think so,” he says, too tired to dissemble his disobedience into something resembling tact. “You need your rifle to take a piss?” He wriggles up to a sitting position, puts his back against the wall and squints harder. “...or your fu- freakin’ armor?”

“It’s a dangerous world out there, hotshot,” she says, but her smile’s just a little tense around the corners, and she shoves her hands into her pockets a moment later. God knows Mac’s seen her lie to strangers as easy as breathing, but it’s a lot harder to lie to someone you work with. Mac can tell you that one from experience.

“You’re going to the satellite station, aren’t you,” he says flatly. The farmers warned them about Revere over dinner, and Mac saw the glint of interest in her eyes, quickly stifled, but he chalked it up to the boss’s general curiosity, rather than some specific interest. More fucking fool him. “Why the heck would you do a thing like that? Do you know how many godda- _darned_ mutants are nested up there?”

“Well, I was about to find out,” she says, with a lightness that doesn’t match the tick of tension in her jaw. “Just a bit of scouting, nothing too dangerous, so you could probably-” She cuts off when he raises a skeptical eyebrow, sighs. “It’s personal, okay.”

She’s never been up this way before, she told him. That means no friends and family in the area, so what the hell kind of _personal_ could make her want to do a damn fool thing like-

Ah. “You picked up another distress signal on the Brotherhood channel.”

If she’s surprised he figured it out, she doesn’t show it, just nods tightly, trying to look casual and failing. “Looks like it’s right on the outer edge of the station. I figured, middle of the night, not much in the way of a moon - it’s probably the best chance to get in and out without having to engage.”

It’s not a bad plan, exactly. Can’t really judge unless he gets a look at the layout himself, but super mutants ain’t the fastest bullets in the barrel, to say the fucking least, and their vision isn’t the best. Their hounds usually make up for that, but there’s ways around that, if you’ve got time to prep, and he’d lay odds the boss knows ‘em.

There’s just this one little problem.

“Boss, uh. You know…” _Shit._ “You know muties like to leave distress signals on, right? To lure people in? The odds that someone’s alive on the other end are, uh. Not great.”

“I know,” she says. Her shades are still hooked in the open collar of her shirt, in deference to the late hour and low lighting, leaving her green eyes uncomfortably bare and her gaze unnervingly direct. “This ain’t a rescue mission, MacCready. It’s about retrieving the remains.”

_Well, when you put it that way…_

...it’s actually even more fucking stupid, actually, but there’s not a whole fuck of a lot he can say in the face of her sincerity. _It’s personal,_ she said, which means that she’s going to go to that _fucking_ station no matter what he says or does here. Mac’s not bad at talking himself out of trouble (and occasionally into it, but that’s a story for another day), but he thinks he knows the boss well enough by now to recognize that stubborn tilt to her jaw, and there’s not a flower’s chance in a radstorm he’s going to talk her out of _this_ shit. She’s going in there, whether he likes it or not, and he can’t even bitch about her taking him into danger for no good fucking reason, because she was clearly trying to sneak out and leave him out of it.

Leave him behind, more like. Goddamn but this woman has no self-preservation instinct at _all._

“...Hell,” he sighs, forgiving himself for the slip because if any situation deserves it it’s this one. He wriggles out of his bedroll and lands with a thump on his knees next to it. “Give me five and I’ll be good to go.”

A slow blink is the only response he gets. “C’mon, MacCready. I know it’s a fool’s errand.”

_Oh, I know she isn’t going to-_

“You don’t have to come.”

He glares at her, already halfway through rolling up his bedroll. “Excuse me? What’s that you were saying?”

The corner of her mouth ticks up. “...Nothing,” she says, a moment later. “I wasn’t saying a god damn thing but some nonsense, apparently. You want I should wait outside?”

_If you’re not going to take the excuse to take off,_ he wants to snap, but even half-asleep still he knows that’d be crossing the line. Too much about his own shit, stuff that doesn’t belong on her shoulders. It’s just, fuck. What if she hadn’t come back? What if she’d fuckin’ died out there, gone down some mutie’s gullet like so much meat, and he’d never even known where to look?

_Fuck!_

“Sure thing, Boss,” he says, careful to keep his voice steady. “I’ll be right there.”

“Awesome.” And then she proves to be just as perceptive as he wishes she wasn’t, sometimes, when she steps close enough to drop a hand down to his shoulder and adds, “It wasn’t about leaving you behind, hotshot. You know that, right? It was just about keeping you out of the shit.”

“Yeah,” he says, and swallows hard. Hopes she can’t see it, even as he knows she can. The boss is a lot of things, but _unobservant_ ain’t one of them. “Don’t worry, Boss. It’s going to go fine.”

###### 

For the record: it does not go fine.

“Hey, I think it we did pretty okay,” Sole protests, when he points this out. It’s possible he points this out at the top of his lungs, but who’s counting? “We won, didn’t we?”

Mac takes a moment to count to three in his head. And then again, when that proves insufficient. “Boss.”

She blinks at him. “Yeah?”

“Your head. Was. On. _Fire_.”

“Details,” she says, waving her hand airily, and laughs even as his hands are clenching into fists. “It’s just hair, MacCready. Not like it’s going to mess up my delicate good looks, right?”

She’s so- She’s just so _fucking-_

“That’s not the point!”

“Yeah?” she says. “Then what is the point, hotshot?”

The _point_ is that her head was on fire because that super mutant took it in his giant green paw and tried to shove her face-first into the campfire. The _point_ is that she didn’t run when they got noticed, like any sensible person would have done, just pulled her rifle and started firing while she ran up the last few steps to the sniper nest that the distress signal was coming from. The fucking _point_ is that she almost died, right in front of him, and if he’d been just a half-second slower on the trigger she would have-

“Nothing,” he says, and turns away. “Not a gosh-darned thing.”

She lets him stomp off to start checking the bodies, and at first he’s savagely glad - _good,_ she _should_ leave him alone, he doesn’t want to _look at her fucking face right now -_ but it quickly fades back into annoyance. He can hear her somewhere behind him, rifling through the jumbled stash of junk that the muties pulled off their unsuspecting dinner guests, and he grits his teeth against both the irritation that she didn’t try to come after him, and the humiliation that he even expected her to try. Fuck, he’s such a goddamn _kid_ sometimes. Six-odd years on his own, and he still sometimes acts like he’s just some idiot _child_ who doesn’t know his ass from his elbow. Of course she’s not coming to come after him, not when he stomped off in a huff, she’s got to think he’s just the worst fucking-

He sighs, exhaling all of the worry and annoyance and temper out into the chill night air on a plume of fogged breath. _You know what happened,_ he tells himself. _You panicked and you lost your temper to cover for it and you made and idiot out of yourself. Not the first time and it probably won’t be the last._

_Just do better next time._

He’s feeling a little sheepish when he rejoins her at the campfire half an hour later - not the one that nearly killed her, thank fuck, his heart can only take so much - but the boss doesn’t make a thing out of it, just nods her thanks when he dumps his armload of cheap pipe pistols to the ground next to her. She pulls out her screwdriver and starts pulling them for parts with fast, practiced hands, and he stands there foolishly for a moment, expecting- he doesn’t know what, exactly. Something. But she doesn’t say anything, and he decides to to search the lopsided trailers along the east gate before he can make even more of an idiot out of himself. He’s pretty sure those were a raider nest before the muties moved in; there’s got to be something worth something in there.

It’s almost dawn by the time they’re done, and Mac eyes the pile of goods they accumulated with mingled respect and trepidation. It’s a tidy fucking haul: two week’s worth of pay at least, from a single night’s work. Chems, caps, weapon mods, some wiring and circuit boards she pulled out the radio control tower he can’t make heads or tails of but he knows’ll sell like hotcakes to the scrappers in Bunker Hill. It’s good stuff, _valuable_ stuff. But…

“Uh, Boss,” he says, his voice cracking only slightly after the hours of silence. She glances up at him inquisitively. “How are we going to carry all of this?”

She cracks a laugh. “Very carefully,” she says, and holds up her hand. He takes it and braces as she pulls herself up, trying to keep his face still, trying not to look at her like- like whatever, you know. Like, _are we good?_ Even if he really wants to know.

“That’s not actually an answer, you know,” he says, more or less on autopilot. Standing, she’s right in his space for a minute, and with their respective heights her eyes are dead level with his. The shades are still gone, shoved in the pocket of her jacket, and she catches his gaze almost effortlessly. It takes everything he’s got not to swallow and look away.

“We’ll prioritize the haul and let the next settlement know there’s stuff for the taking,” she says.

“Now?”

“Fuck, no. In the morning.” She finally breaks eye contact, looks ruefully over his shoulder at the sun, starting to creep up over the horizon. “...More in the morning. Fuck. We need sleep in the worst way.”

He doesn’t point out that she was the one who wanted to sneak off in the middle of the night, because he’s got some self-preservation instinct and because she’s still standing too close to him, scrambling all the signals. Fuck. “If we bunk down for about six hours, we still get a ways down the road before dark and probably make it to the training yard tomorrow afternoon.”

“Yes,” she says, snapping her fingers and pointing at him. “Good plan. We can take the trailers you cleaned out, mine the approach and both get some sleep.”

“Sure thing.” She’s still not stepping away so he does, finally, taking a deep breath of cold predawn air now that he’s no longer sharing it with the boss. “You take the back, I’ll take the front?”

“Deal.”

They divvy up the mines and split up, Sole heading towards the road while he goes to the back gate. He finishes setting the mines and makes it back to the trailer before she does, throws down his bedroll slapdash and crawls into it, shivering, as the night’s work starts to catch up to him for real.

Fucking christ, she could’ve died out there. He would’ve followed right behind her, probably, but he’d’ve had to watch it happen first. And all for a _god damn holotag._

He keeps his eyes closed when he hears the boss come back, soft-footed as always in her thin-soled boots, and keeps them closed even more determinedly when she pauses over his bedroll, looking down at him in silence. He considers faking a snore, then decides it’d been too obvious even for him. And the boss moves on a moment later anyway, lays out her own bedroll a bare inch from his and settles in.

He’s just starting to drop off before he hears her say, almost a whisper, “It’s not like I don’t know it was stupid, you know. I probably would’ve been dead if you hadn’t been along.”

He holds very still, trying not to even so much as breathe too loudly in case she realizes he’s awake and stops.

“I just. When you sign up, you know, it’s supposed to be about something bigger. It’s supposed to mean something. Otherwise what’s the point?”

She lets out a sigh that he feels in his bones, and then a moment later she rolls over. It puts her back squarely against his, and he leans back into the thin bulwark of her narrow shoulders, feeling weak and foolish and grateful. Her radiating warmth spreads through their bedrolls, loosening the tight coil of muscle between his shoulders that locked up the moment he realized she was leaving.

_She’s here, and she’s alive, and you’re not alone._

“When you die someone should notice,” she breathes into the dark. “Someone should fucking care. When you sign your name on the dotted line, it means that there’ll be someone to remember your name.”

_I’ll remember you,_ he says, with the press of his shoulders back against hers. She reaches back to squeeze his hip through the blankets, a wordless gesture of thanks she can’t bring herself to say out loud, and when she settles back down to her bedroll, seems to drop down into sleep within moments.

Mac lies awake for a while longer, staring into the empty dark of the trailer and thinking, _I am so incredibly fucked._


	9. Chapter 9

Sole’s Pip-boy chirps them awake well before either of them are ready to face the day, but Mac just laughs at Sole’s inarticulate grumbling, unaccountably cheerful. All of the worry and temper and stress of the night before seems distant in the bright buttery light of the afternoon sun, and he leaves the boss with a companionable slap on the shoulder before he grabs both their packs and drags them over to their stash pile. The boss might have some ideas of her own about what to take and what to keep, but he’s been selling to scrappers almost since he was big enough to shoot straight, and he’s got a pretty good eye for value. He’ll make it work.

Sole appears half an hour later, moving a little stiff but looking somewhat scrubbed up from the soot and blood and dirt of last night’s skirmish. A couple of mouthfuls from the canteen, probably, but he doesn’t begrudge her the water, considering her close call last night. He’d want to get that shit off of him, too.

She’s also done something about her hair, or at least made the attempt. He takes one look at the shoddy hack job and has to look away to bite down on his surge of laughter - not quite fast enough, based on her answering grunt of annoyance.

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. Let’s see how good you’d look with half that face rug burnt off, huh?”

“You don’t have to be mean about it,” he says, running a protective hand over his goatee. “What was it you were saying last night? ‘Not like it’s going to ruin your looks?’”

“Don’t quote my own words back at me. It’s just rude.” She flops down next to him, her legs sprawling out haphazardly, her boot leaving muddy streaks on his calf. “Besides, that was before I got a look in the mirror this morning. Even I've got some pride, and whatever kind of look this is... It ain’t a good one.”

He snorts, wrapping a hand around her ankle to stop her restive tapping. “Nothing a little soap and a sharp knife can’t fix. I can take care of it next time we’ve got hot water, if you want.” He sneaks a look at her out of the corner of his eye, but her shades are firmly back on her face, and he can’t see much of what she’s thinking. “Or there’s probably a barber in Bunker Hill, if you’re willing to wait a couple days. Might even be able to do the fancy stuff, if you want.”

“It’d just be wasted on me anyway, MacCready,” she says, running a rueful hand over her scarred cheek. “I’ll probably take you up on it.” She jerks her chin at the piles of stuff he’s sorted in front of him. “What’s all this then?”

“Your pack, my pack, nice to haves if they can fit, leave ‘em for the scavs,” he says, pointing to each group in turn. “I pulled out the stuff we already had in our packs to sort. I know you’re probably going to want to go through the stuff yourself, but figured I’d give you a head start.”

She leans forward to peer interestedly over his shoulder. “Based on cost?”

He makes a wobbling gesture with the flat of his palm, trying to ignore how close she’s sitting. “Value to weight, more like. That missile launcher the mutie leader was shooting at us would fetch a pretty penny, but hauling it down there? Not a chance.”

She _hmms._ “You’re good at this.”

He’d be lying if he said he didn’t feel a flush of pleasure at the compliment, but he just clears his throat and does his best to ignore it. Not her fault she’s pushing buttons that aren’t really relevant to the conversation at hand. “Got a lot of practice. You know me, Boss, I can pinch a cap till it bleeds if I gotta. I’ve done time as a scavver before, just like anyone who walks the roads.”

“You know your shit,” she says. “Only thing-” She leans past him to fish something out of the _fuck it_ pile, the ragged ends of her hair brushing against his cheek with the motion. He has to fight to hold still instead of reaching up to tuck it behind her ear, like his traitorous hand wants to do. “This comes with us.”

He eyes the circuit board-looking thing in her hand. Science, not his forte, but he knows what sells. “Oh, come on. Maybe something with a blinky light’ll sell well with a junker, but this is just- sad.”

“Bite your tongue, pal. This here’s a flux sensor. You know what you’re doing, you can use this to tweak power consumption down to the _nth_ degree.”

He regards it skeptically. “Oh yeah? What kind of power consumption, exactly?”

“All kinds, really, but out here? Power armor, mostly.” When his skeptical look intensifies, she laughs and tosses it on top of her pile. “Don’t worry, I’ve got a buyer in mind.”

Her friends in the Brotherhood, probably. No one else much uses power armor except raiders, and she sure as shit won’t be selling to _them._ Brotherhood soldiers don’t usually deign to bargain with common scavvers for their tech scrap, but the boss ain’t exactly common, either. For all he knows they’ve got a deal already in place. Not his problem either way, as long as she’s willing to shoulder the extra weight.

As if reading his thoughts, she liberates a couple of ammo boxes from her pile and tosses them over onto his, balancing out the load once more. He makes an outraged noise and she laughs low, nudging his shoulder with hers.

“Trust me, hotshot. The payout will be worth it.”

“Better be,” he mutters, but he can’t seem to hang onto his annoyance for long. She grins at his reluctant twitch of a smile, and then rolls somewhat creakily to her feet, using his shoulder for leverage. Both of them wince at the pop of an abused hip joint.

“Oh, what I wouldn't give for a hot bath and a massage,” she sighs. “C’mon, let’s get this shit packed up and hit the road. Sooner we get going, sooner we get paid.”

###### 

They hike as far as they can that afternoon, and break for camp just as the sun is setting. In the distance Mac can faintly see the outline of a building that’s almost certainly their target, if Sole’s map is to be believed. No more than two, maybe three miles off at most. Mac eyes it while the boss leads them a little ways off the road, looking for a safe spot to camp, but when she catches the direction of his gaze she shakes her head.

“We’ll come at it fresh tomorrow,” she says. “No advantage to hunting ferals in the dark, not when they can smell you coming.”

Mac winces. “Yeah, no argument from me, Boss.” He spots a broken house off to the left, nothing more than a concrete slab and a few rad-rotted timbers, and jerks his chin to get her attention. “Take a look.”

She looks over and sighs. “Fuck. I’m tired of sleeping on concrete.”

“You tired of having a hot fire, too?” He grins. “I mean, considering how up close and personal you got last night…”

It’s enough distance, now, that he can joke about it. She just rolls her eyes and takes off her shades, shoving them into the open vee of her shirt collar and swinging off towards the house. “Smart ass.”

“Always, Boss.”

By now, they’ve pretty well worked out their division of labor when it comes to making and breaking camp, and they fall to it without further discussion. Mac goes off whistling into the nearby copse of trees, hunting up some likely-looking branches for firewood, while Sole unpacks and starts chopping up the tatos they found growing wild on the side of the road. Once the fire’s built, Sole surrenders the foodstuffs to his demanding gesture with nothing more than an amused huff and goes off to lay traps around the perimeter, setting out their packs on the way back.

One bedroll, he notices, with probably poorly-disguised relief. They’re definitely good, then. Not like he was worrying - well, not much, anyway. Still. It’s good to be sure.

He catches the jerky she tosses to him a few mintues later and feeds a few pieces into the pot, stirring them in until they’re completely submerged. The tatos are just starting to soften when he pokes at them with his boot knife, and he makes a satisfied noise in the back of his throat before folding the remainder of the jerky back into its oilcloth wrapper and tossing it back to Sole. “How’re we looking on food stores?”

“Finished off the last of the dried fish this morning,” she says, stowing the jerky in her pack and coming over to join him. He shifts, offering her his seat on the log he’d dragged out of the woods, but she shakes her head, settles cross-legged onto the cement floor next to him. It puts her head about level with his waist, and he tries not to pay attention to how wrong it feels, having her sit at his feet. “Plenty of jerky still, thanks to you.”

“You were the one that brought down the radstag, Boss.”

“But we’re pretty much out of noodles and grain. Maybe enough for dinner tomorrow, if we skimp. We better hope that the next farm down the way has something to trade, or we’re going to have a lean few days till we get to Bunker Hill.”

“Or maybe we’ll get lucky and find some more tatos,” Mac says, nodding at the pot. “Take a bit longer to cook, but worth it.”

“No argument from me.” She sighs and stretches out her legs towards the fire, warming her booted feet in the flickering heat from the flames. “Honest to god, this is probably the best I’ve eaten in a while. I think I’m actually putting weight back on again.”

Mac resolutely does not look down at any of the places where that weight might have gone, keeping his gaze focused on the flames. “Well, yeah, Boss. I’d be losing weight too if I’d been eating your cooking.”

“You know what, MacCready-” she says, shoving at his knee, but the huge grin on her face sort of ruins the effect of her mock outrage.

“I’m just sayin’, your folks did you a disservice letting you skint out of lessons.”

“Oh, fuck, no,” she says, startled into a rusty chuckle. “My parents didn’t set foot in anything so common as a _kitchen_ in their entire blessed lives. Anything I know I picked up from my unit.”

“They didn’t do you much of a favor either,” Mac says on autopilot. The way she said it, it makes it sound like- Like she grew up _rich_? No way, no fucking way. Yeah, it could explain the lack of basic domestic skills, like sewing or cooking, but so could a number of other things. He feels like he could almost believe she was a vaultie for real, over that. Nobody who came up soft handles themself the way she does. It just doesn’t fit.

Then again, she did say she had a “misspent youth.” Meaning she likely left home at some point, either on her own or at gunpoint. She wouldn’t be the first little rich girl that ended up in the wastes, just luckier than most, to have made it this far. And she ended up serving _somewhere_ , the last few days made that pretty fucking clear, even if he can’t quite figure out with what outfit. If she did grow up easy, she sure as fuck lost it quick enough. There’s nothing soft about her now.

“They did their best,” the boss sighs, and it takes him a beat to wrestle his wandering mind back to where they were in their conversation. “Most of ‘em weren’t much better off than me, though. Mostly we lived off rations. Or the locals would cook for us, if we did well enough.” She drapes her forearm along the log next to him, turns to rest her chin in the crook of her elbow. “What about you? You learn from your folks?”

“Never met ‘em,” MacCready says with a shrug. “Picked up everything the old-fashioned way.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“Read it a book.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nah, we had books for every darned thing, practically. We traded for ‘em whenever we could, since there weren’t any adults around to teach us stuff.”

He’s so caught up in the easy back-and-forth between them that it slips out before he thinks about it, and he tenses up as soon as he realizes what he said, braces against the inevitable comment. He’s heard just about everything under the sun, and it’s about one of the only good things about the fucking Commonwealth, how no one’s ever heard of Little Lamplight so they can’t say any stupid shit. But now-

“Huh,” is all the boss says. Nothing on her face but polite interest. “Just kids?”

“Well, and teenagers, yeah,” Mac says. Still a little tense, but she hasn’t made a stupid joke yet, so. Good sign. “Deal was, you leave when you’re sixteen. We kind of had a... thing, about not trusting adults.”

“We are pieces of shit, it’s true,” she says agreeably. Mac snorts a laugh and she grins up at him, a little smug at his surprise. “No, seriously though, I can see that. It takes time to grow into a real sonofabitch. Makes sense to kick ‘em out before it can get that far.”

He shrugs. “Something like that, yeah.”

“Still,” she adds, looking thoughtful, “I’m guessing you had to have some kind of leadership. Nature abhors a vacuum, and all that jazz. Was it by age, or…?”

“Uh,” Mac says, and rubs the back of his neck. It’s the most obvious tell in the world, and Sole straightens a little to peer up into his face.

“No way.”

Damn it. “No way what?”

“It was you, wasn’t it?”

He sighs. His own fault, for bringing this up. “Mayor, for six years running.”

“No shit! How the hell did that happen?”

“...I punched a girl in the nose and said I was taking charge.” He waits politely for her bark of laughter to die down into chuckles. “In my defense,” he says, his lips twitching slightly, “she got elected for five minutes and wanted to change the title to _Princess_.”

“Clearly unsuited for the role,” Sole says, still grinning. “All of the glory, none of the guts.”

“Hey, you can sneer, but I was right. And I did pretty good by them, when I was there. I ran one heck of a tight ship.”

“I bet you did, buddy.” She shifts to face the fire more fully, and ducks her head down to lay her cheek against her shoulder. The way she’s sitting, all he’d have to do is move over an inch or two and she’d be resting her head on his thigh. He flushes and turns back to the cookpot, stirring the tatos perhaps more vigorously than necessary. “So what you’re saying is, I should be asking you for advice on settlement building, huh? Since you’re the expert, and all.”

He looks down at her obnoxious grin and makes a face of mock offense. “Hey, I’m more than just a hired gun. I have facets. Layers, even.”

“Like an onion!" She laughs and ducks his affectionate shove, looping her hand around his ankle to hold herself steady. She leaves it there when his hand drops away, and he can’t feel much through his boot but he’s aware of it anyway, the muffled weight of her grip and the off-center pressure of her fingertips hooked against the laces. “Seems like I picked better than I knew, asking you along on that job. I’ll have to owe Irma a thank you next time we’re in Goodneighbor.”

_So do I,_ Mac thinks, a little helplessly. All those months on his own, he never could have imagined that this would be waiting for him one day. That there was even anyone like her, out in the whole wide ‘wealth.

“You do that,” he says instead, and wipes off his boot knife. “C’mon. Dinner’s just about done.”

###### 

Mac eyes the ghouls lying about in front of the base and thinks that maybe, just maybe, they might be in over their heads.

"-three, four, five,” Sole counts off, next to him. “And that’s just the front gate. Well this is just… peachy.”

“Six,” Mac says, nodding to the one stretched out deceptively still at the foot of the steps. Fucking ferals, why’s it always gotta be ferals? “You sure this is a good idea, boss?”

“How boring would life be if I only did things that seemed like a good idea?” He opens his mouth, and she holds up a hand. “Aht! Rhetorical question, bud.”

“I was just going to say that it’d be a lot easier if _someone_ hadn’t gotten my scope smashed up with their last ‘good idea.’”

“Sass,” Sole says, shaking her head sorrowfully. “All I get is sass from you.” She arranges her face into an approximation of sympathy. “I mean, if you’re saying you can’t make the shot, you could always sit this one out-”

The crack of the rifle splits the still morning air, and the big one nearest them twitches and drops, halfway through the motion of getting up to investigate the noise. Greenish goo oozes out of a hole right in the middle of its withered forehead, and Mac raises an eyebrow at her as he racks for another shot. “You were saying?”

She shakes her head, but he can see the grin fighting at the corner of her mouth. “Now you’re just showing off.”

“Who, me?”

“Uh-huh.” She pulls her shotgun out of its holster. “We’re going to play this like the vault, I think. The bastards are fast but they sure as hell ain’t too bright either. I’ll close and you cover. Work for you?”

“Got your back, Boss,” he says, and doesn’t let himself think about the dozens of ferals waiting for them inside, the close quarters and the reaching hands. Sole isn’t like Lucy. Sole knows how to shoot back.

“Alright then, hotshot. Let’s move.”

###### 

The first building, they manage to clear with a minimum of issues. Mac has a bad turn when three of them at once come boiling out of one of the upper rooms and over the edge into the common, but it doesn’t slow down his shooting any, and the boss is fast as hell with that big shotgun of hers. None of them so much as lay a claw on her, and Mac, foolishly, starts to relax.

The second building, that’s when it all goes to hell. They clear the foyer and the top floor with no problems, and then take a break to reload and check the life signs. “I’m not seeing anything,” she says, low-voiced, her head bent toward his as she shows him the screen. “But there’s a weird radiation haze coming from the bathroom downstairs.”

Mac cocks his head and studies the screen, glancing from it to the walls to measure out the floor plan in his head. “When we came in it looked like the power station was right outside that wall,” he says, jerking his chin toward the source of the radiation warning. “Maybe there was a containment breach? Wouldn’t be the first core leakage I’ve seen, won’t be the last.”

“Yeah, probably.” She gives a last, lingering look at the Pip-boy, then shakes her head and lets her hand drop to the side, straightening out of her easy crouch. “Let’s take a look around, then, and see what we can- ooh!”

Mac spots what got her attention a moment later: a weapons rack, hanging over a desk in one of the upper offices. He snorts and makes no move to follow as she picks her way across the half-rotted floorboards, setting aside his rifle and pulling out the spare magazines to reload. “You know those things are meant to be used in power armor.”

“It’s not so bad once you get used to the kick,” Sole says, running her hands along the ripper’s serrated edge. “Still a lot more likely to take off the other guy’s hand then your own.”

“I’m sure as heck not carrying it.”

“Didn’t ask you to, pal.” She sets her feet and then lifts it off the weapons rack, bracing it against the corner of the desk while she bends down to get a better look at the casing on the power unit. “You know, I don’t think this thing is totally dead. Bet if I hooked it up to a fusion core I could get it back to full charge.”

“You’re not seriously thinking about taking that thing with you, are you?”

“Bet it’d sell like gangbusters in Bunker Hill. They get a bunch of mercs through there.”

“What kind of dumb-ass merc is going to carry a frickin’ chainsaw when they could take a perfectly serviceable rifle for half the caps-”

He shuts his mouth with a snap at Sole’s suddenly raised hand, and in the silence that follows he hears the same thing that caught her attention: a rustle of movement, down near the bathroom on the lower levels.

His thoughts slow down, just like he’s still lining up a shot and the target turns to shoot at him. There weren’t any life signs- it could just be the wind- but she said the Pip-boy doesn’t always work through concrete- and enough radiation can mess up the reading-

Radiation.

_Oh, shit._

“Glowing one!” he yells, just as the beast comes roaring around the corner and into the open floor beneath them. It’s a perfect killing zone, a sniper’s wet dream, if only he _had his gun in his hands and could fucking fire-_

The glowing one lunges forward, almost too fast to follow, and lets out a bellow of rage. Behind him, MacCready hears the scrabble of feral paws on the floor as the ones they cleared come twitching back to life, and Sole lets out a yelp of pain and outrage, followed by the wet crunch of her boot descending through a crumbling skull.

Mac looks down at the glowing one, already coming up the ramp towards him, and knows he’s going to die.

“Move, move, move!” Sole shouts, and Mac’d love to follow her order, give anything to, actually, but it’s like his feet are rooted to floor. It’s as bad as before, knowing what’s going to happen and not being able to do a damn thing to stop it, but this time it’s worse because he can’t even run away, can’t even save his own fucking skin, can only stand there and watch it come like it’s moving in slow motion.

The glowing one cannonballs into him and sends him flying, and it’s like the world snaps back into real time again. He’s hyper-aware of the throbbing ache where his shoulder impacted back against the post, the muffled noises of the boss fighting for her life behind him, and the sharp greenish glare of the pits where the beast’s eyes used to be, hovering right above his own. His hands come up to shove it away on automatic reflex, but the glowing one just growls and scrabbles at the ground for leverage, its jagged teeth snapping too close to his throat.

_I’m going to fucking die,_ he thinks, and there’s not a goddamn thing he can do about it.

“Mac!” the boss shouts, and distantly he’s sorry he’s going to make her see this, something he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy. Wishes that she’d turn away, focus on saving her own skin, getting out and getting away so she doesn’t have to-

“ _Fuck,_ ” the boss says lowly, way too close, as the teeth snap closer. _Get the fuck out,_ Mac thinks wildly, but it’s too late: he hears her boots on the floor right next to him, and then there’s a blistering roar of noise that drowns everything else out.

He can’t quite understand what’s happening at first, sees only the flash of metal and hears only the pained bellow from the glowing one. But a moment later the beast falls silent with a wet noise, and then there’s the grind of metal against bone and the snarling head goes flying just as Mac gets bathed in a spatter of greenish gore.

The sound cuts abruptly, and Mac stares blankly upward to see the boss, standing above him with the ripper still in her hands. There’s a little quake in her shoulders, either stress or strain from the weight of the ripper, he doesn’t know, but she lowers it slowly in one controlled motion, and then abruptly drops it the west of the way with a screech of metal. It vibrates the floorboards underneath him from the impact, and Sole nudges it with the toe of one boot.

“Motherfucker,” she says, almost reverently. Her face is splattered almost as badly as his feels, and as he watches she lifts one hand to her cheek, dazedly smears a chunk of ooze away with the back of her sleeve and blinks down at him. “Told you that puppy still had some juice.”

He knows there’s a joke he’s supposed to make there, a smartass comeback or a snappy remark. Something like _you always gotta get in the last word, Boss_ , or _what, so you’re some kind of mechanic now?_ But the words don’t come, and after a moment of silence Sole’s face twists down on itself. He looks away before he can see the sympathy arrive.

Silence reigns for a moment, and then: “Can you tell me if you’re hurt, at least?” If he could be grateful for anything, it’d be the brisk, businesslike way she asks. He shakes his head; nothing but bruises, and those don’t matter. “Okay, then, pal. I’m going to scout around a bit, make sure that was the goddamn last of them. You just wait here.”

She leaves without waiting for a response, another kindness wasted on him, and Mac listens to her footsteps fade away down the ramp, and doesn’t move at all.

She comes back some indeterminate amount of time later - a few minutes, ten, an hour, what the fuck does he know - and he blinks back into awareness at the warm weight of her hand on his knee. She’s crouched in front of him, the worst of the mess wiped away from her face, leaving nothing but a few greenish smears and a neutral expression. At some point she shed her jacket and armor, and she’s down to just her gore-stained flannel shirt, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows and her skin pink with scrubbing. “Hey, hotshot,” she says softly. “I found a faucet that’s still got some pressure behind it if you want to scrub up a bit.”

The thought of getting the gore off of him is abruptly more compelling than not moving, and he grunts an assent, presses a hand to the floor to leverage himself out of his slump. She straightens up out of his way and then thrusts down one bare palm, takes his when he reaches up and pulls him slowly but steadily to his feet.

She lets go once he’s up, but only to put her hand to the middle of his back instead. She guides him gently but firmly to the upstairs bathroom, and props the door open with a stray cinderblock to keep some light coming in from the hallway windows while she runs the taps until the rust clears. Then she unbuttons her shirt and yanks it off, leaving her in nothing but her thin gray undershirt, undershirt, and rips up the bloodstained flannel to wet in the sink.

He puts both hands against the sink behind him so that he won’t reach for her and closes his eyes, lets himself get lost in her grip on his jaw and the slow scrub of the clammy cloth over his skin. It takes several passes before she’s satisfied, working her way down his throat and tugging down the collar of his coat to get at the back of his neck, but eventually she wrings out the cloth and sets the pads of her fingers to the back of his hand.

“Better?” she says, not quite like she expects a response. He nods, and with effort, manages to make eye contact in the dim light filtering in from the hallway.

She smiles back, and his stomach roils. “Boss, I-”

“Nope,” she says, popping the ‘p.’ “We’re not doing that. Just get yourself cleaned up, and I’ll see if I can’t rustle up something clean for us to wear.”

He nods weakly, and she squeezes his wrist before slipping past him and out the door. He listens to the retreating groan of the floorboards under her weight and, after a moment to brace himself, manages to turn around and look in the mirror.

His face is drawn and pale, and in dire need of a shave, but the only reminder of the glowing one’s attack is the ichor still splattered down the front of his clothes and his wide, bloodshot eyes. He turns away again, and slowly, creakily, starts to shrug out of his coat.

He’s down to just his undershirt when Sole gets back, scrubbing his hands and arms in the weak trickle of water from the sink. “I found some gear,” she says, from the doorway. “Shirt, pants, boots, the whole deal.”

“Sure,” Mac says, because he doesn’t know what else to say, and nods for her to set the clothes down on the back of the toilet. As she does, his gaze wanders down the line of her bared arms just long enough to see that the freckles keep going before he looks back to his hands with a snap. If she was the kind of woman who liked getting looked at, she wouldn’t wear so many layers all the damn time.

“Hopefully these are about your size,” she says, letting the boots drop to the lid of a toilet with a hollow _thwomp._ “There’s a couple spares for the pants if I eyeballed it wrong. Meet me down by the back door when you’re ready.”

She gives his shoulder a squeeze, the heat of her hand almost shocking against the clammy chill of his freshly-scrubbed skin, and strides off. Mac eyes the bundle of fabric, sighs, and turns off the tap.

For someone who never learned to sew, Sole’s eye for fit is pretty damn on the nose, he discovers, pulling the heavy thermal shirt over his head. Then again, he doesn’t have more than an inch and a couple dozen pounds on her, if that. She probably just grabbed him the same size as fit for her.

The pants are just as good as the shirt, heavy canvas that's quick to dry and slow to unravel, and she’s even found some clean socks to go with. He tries on the boots, but even as tight as he can lace them they’re just a little loose at the heel. That way lies blisters, so he sets them aside with a regretful look and pulls back on his old ankle boots. They’re a little thin in the sole, sure, but they’re perfectly broken in.

It’s only when he unfolds the coat that he realizes that Sole must have broken into one of the pre-War lockers for the gear, because that’s no raider jacket. Double-layered and lined for winter, the outer layer dyed a mottled gray and made of a soft synthetic with a dull matte shine that means it’s probably fireproof as well as waterproof. It’s even reinforced, with ballistic panels along the chest and back. Even in the Gunners he never saw something so good. He’s holding a fucking fortune in his hands.

_I should tell her to sell this down in the city,_ he thinks, running his hand along the collar. But even as he thinks it, his brain helpfully replays the soft, faintly hopeful look she had on her face when she brought it to him, and he knows he doesn't have it in him to tell her no. Not today.

He picks it up and slings it around his shoulders. Perfect fit, of course.

_Maybe I’ll just wear it till I can buy a replacement,_ he rationalizes. _Easier than trying to fit it into the packs, anyway._

He’s got it zipped up and is strapping the last piece of his armor back onto his left arm when he makes it back down the stairs. Sole’s leaning up against the wall near the doorway, both their packs at her feet, knocking the heel of her new boot restlessly against the splintered remains of the base molding. She's got her own set of stiff new shirt and trousers, and a fancy new chestplate she must've scrounged off one of these army boys, matte-black and segmented like a radscorpion's shell - but over _that_ she's still wearing the same old faded leather duster he patched up for her back in Lexington.

His stomach twists down with a fresh burst of shame at the realization that there was only one fancy coat in whatever lockers she scavved, and she chose to give it to him. _Him_. He knows he's probably making a big deal out of nothing - she probably just took the armor and left him the coat and called it fair - but it still leaves him frozen a second time, wavering indecisively halfway down the stairs. He could go take it off, trade this coat for her old duster; that'd _really_ make it fair. He didn't earn his half of the haul after his performance today, and just 'cause she doesn't seem to count the cost right doesn't mean he should let himself forget.

Before he can do it, though, she looks up at the creak of his weight on the stair, and he knows from the way she lights up with a smile that he isn't going to do a goddamn thing.

“Boots didn’t quite make the cut,” he says, to cut off whatever she might say. Normally he'd do anything to earn a smile like that, but he can't hear it now. He just can't. “The rest fits fine though.”

“Sure does.” She makes a demanding gesture at his hand, and he sighs and holds it out. She sets to finishing the buckles, but absently, her gaze running over him with the same assessing look she gets when she’s going into combat. "No problems with the ammo belt? Thought it might pinch."

“Nope. Do I pass muster?” It's hard to stand the way she's looking at him, the itch it leaves under his skin. She’s trying to treat him like normal, but he knows it’s just a front. "Gonna send me back to scrub behind my ears?"

She snorts. “Your ears are safe.” She gives his wrist a pat as she finishes the buckle and finally, finally lets him go. “Lookin’ real good, there, hotshot."

He looks for sarcasm in her freshly-scrubbed face and finds nothing. Just an easy kind of appreciation, a little twinkle in her eye. He looks away fast.

“Boss, listen. I really gotta say-”

“Still no,” she says, but softens the blow with a quick scuff of her knuckles down the line of his arm. “You want to have that talk, I’m game if you are, but save it for safe ground, okay? I want to get moving, maybe even make it to County Crossing by dinner.”

_I’m sorry,_ he thinks, _I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry-_

“Sure thing, Boss,” he says, and picks up his pack. “Lead the way.”


	10. Chapter 10

They get into County Crossing late that afternoon. It’s a quiet hike there: Mac's morally certain that now’s not the time to have that talk, but damned if he can think of anything else to say with all the apologies welling up in his throat. The boss, for her part, doesn’t seem much inclined toward talking either, but that’s nothing new. She doesn’t tend to open her mouth until she’s got something to say, unlike him - but even so she seems quieter than usual, eyes fixed on some distant point in the horizon, lips pursed like she’s in thought.

Mac doesn’t want to know what she’s thinking about. He _doesn’t._ He really, really-

Aw, hell.

The folks at the farm are real glad to see them, which is still a pleasant surprise. Mac’s not used to being welcomed- well, anywhere, really, but little farms like this least of all. Most of his life since coming to the surface he’s been a scavver, a drifter, a merc: the kind of person good homesteaders will tolerate, if they have to, but they’re usually just just as happy to see the back of them once the business is done.

Mind you, Mac suspects _any_ well-armed stranger with good intent might’ve been welcome by these folks, this time around.

“You folk lookin’ for work?” the woman in charge says, all narrow eyes and nervous twitch to her hands, and it doesn’t take much to see the panic underneath the hard look. Mac glances over at the boss, but he can see the recognition on her face, the slight straightening of her shoulders that says _what happened_ and _how can I fix this._

“Might could be willin’ to pick something up,” the boss says, her voice gone honey-sweet and slow in a drawl, to cover the way she’s looking around, scoping the exits and looking for trouble. “What do you have in mind?”

“Raiders,” the woman spits. “They took my Lincoln, sent us the ransom demand two days back. We don’t have the caps they’re asking, but we’ve got enough to pay you proper if you can get him back, I swear it.”

“I don’t doubt that, mistress,” the boss says. A slight relaxation of her shoulders now; the danger’s not immediate, and she’s got time to plan. “We’d be happy to help. Do you have anyplace my man here can get cleaned up while we talk business? We’ve had a few days of hard road, could use a place to spend the night.”

Mac controls a flinch, if barely. He’s not sure what sets him off worst: her sending him away, or her calling him _her man_ in that easy tone of voice. Fuck. Both, probably. She doesn’t mean anything by it, he knows. She’s just acting like normal, like nothing’s wrong, and it's not her fault it’s rubbing right up against his last raw nerve.

“Of course, of course,” the woman nods. She puts two fingers to her mouth and whistles long and low, and one of the figures working away in the field off to the right breaks away and starts running their way, double-time. “This is Candice,” she says, when the figure arrives panting at her side, turning into a teenage girl in dirt-stained coveralls a little too big for her skinny rawboned frame. “My eldest. She’ll show you where you can settle.”

Mac spares a single glance towards the boss, but she just nods to him calmly, her face placid and her eyes hidden by her shades. He turns before he can do something stupid, like ask her if she’s sure, and nods to the teenager. “Lead the way.”

Farm this size, they don’t have much in the way of guest quarters, but there’s space cleared in the back of the barn, with a couple bales of hay stacked up to give a semblance of privacy. They’ve even got a couple of stained mattresses on the floor, with an oil lamp on one side and a rickety table in the corner, a big bowl on top and a mirror slapped to the wall behind it. It’s not bad, for a small family joint like this. Almost homey.

“Water pump’s around the back,” Candice says, jerking her chin at the jury-rigged sink. “Outhouse on the other side of the house. You need anything, you just holler.”

“I think we’re covered. Appreciate the help.”

“Welcome.” She hesitates before leaving, though, lingers with her hands shoved in her pockets.

Mac gives her a curious look. “What is it?”

“Your boss.” She sounds a little nervous, and a little annoyed about it. “Is she for real?”

“What, about taking the job?”

“Yeah. Like, nobody’s dumb enough to take on a pack ‘a raiders for what we’ve got. Even I know that. So’s she serious about it? Not suicidin', or chem-drunk, or pullin’ a scam?”

He’s not sure whether to be amused or offended. Are they so used to getting the dregs out this way that they can’t recognize a real professional when they see one? “She’s the real deal all right,” he says, opting for amused. “We’ve hit harder targets.”

Candice’s narrow, berry-stained mouth purses. “Yeah? So what’s she doing taking shit pay?”

_A question I ask myself every day,_ he thinks with a sigh. “She’s with the Minutemen. They love all that do-gooder sh- stuff.”

“Huh.” Candice looks like she doesn’t know what to do with this information. Mac silently sympathizes. “Alright then. We’ll fly whatever damn flag you want, you get Da back.”

_Yeah,_ Mac thinks, only a little ruefully. _I think that’s kinda the point._

###### 

The boss told him to clean up, so clean up he does; pumps a bucket of water and borrows some space on the spit to get it nice and hot, then strips down to his undershirt in front of the mirror and scrubs up. There’s some spots he missed when he was cleaning up at the training yard earlier, and with ten goddamn minutes to himself he can get his hair really and properly clean for the first time since they left the boathouse. It feels better even than he expected, working hot water and soap into his scalp; almost good enough to forget the fucking sword hanging over his head. Boss’ll be back soon, and then they’ll have to _talk,_ and then- and then-

He can’t quite picture how it’ll go, is the thing. She doesn’t seem like she’s mad, and he’s _seen_ her mad; this ain’t that. But there’s a lot of things in between mad and _fine,_ and he knows her well enough to know that she can play it close to the chest, if she wants. And she’s been distracted, since they left; lost in her own thoughts, and he’s got no fucking idea what’s going on in that twisty head of hers.

Nothing to do but wait, and let it happen. Not exactly his favorite course of action.

He’s just finishing up his shave when he hears the _thump_ of a pack being dropped to the mattress behind him, followed by the heavier thump of the boss following suit. He hesitates over a tricky bit on the hinge of his jaw, but when she doesn’t say anything, he goes back to his work, grateful for the angle of the mirror that keeps him from having to look at her face.

Eventually, though, he finishes up, manages to take an extra moment or two splashing water on his face and then slowly, reluctantly, turns around to face her.

She makes an appreciative noise and grins up at him. “You clean up all right, MacCready.”

As an opening gambit, it’s disconcerting enough that he’s glad he no longer has a blade at his throat. “So you’ve said.” He can’t quite bring himself to make eye contact, staring off just past her right ear instead. “There’s more in the bucket there, if you want a go, but it’s gone cold. Might want to heat some up fresh before dinner starts.”

She runs a considering hand along the ragged mess that’s all that’s left of her old ponytail. “I might at that. That scrub back in the training yard didn’t really cut it.”

His gaze follows the path of her hand and then snaps back to his uneasy stare at the knot in the wall beside her head. “About that-”

“Yeah,” she sighs, and when he manages to stop being such a fucking coward and bring his gaze back to hers, he sees nothing but a slightly wistful smile, the skin creased up at the corner of her eyes. “Yeah, okay. We’re about as safe as we’re gonna get for the foreseeable future, so- yeah. Time for that talk I promised you.”

Her voice is quiet, soft like she never is, and he must be wired wrong because it makes him want to bolt more than anything else. Instead, he shoves his hands in his pockets, leans back against the wall and plants his feet. He can’t let himself fuck this up worse than he already did. “I just wanted to say,” he starts, and finds the rest already right there on his tongue, ready after the hundreds of repetitions that’ve gone through his brain all day. “I’m sorry, Boss, I really am. You didn’t let me say it before but I _am,_ I froze and I nearly got you killed and-”

She holds up her hand. “Whoa, okay, see, this is why I didn’t want to have this talk earlier.”

He bites his tongue on the urge to apologize again, and says nothing.

“Not ‘cause I was upset,” she clarifies, after getting a look at whatever's on his face. “I just figured you’d need some time before you’d listen, and we didn’t have it.”

“Listen to _what_?”

“Listen to me tell you that you don’t have to fucking apologize, hotshot,” she says, but gently. He opens his mouth and she shakes her head. “Nah, wait, that wasn’t clear enough. Meant to say, you’ve got nothing to apologize _for._ ”

“But-” His head feels like a security terminal with the wrong code, spitting _error, error, error._ “I froze.”

She sighs and scrubs a hand over the side of her face. “I almost froze myself, and that thing wasn’t right in my goddamn face. Long as we don’t get into something like that again-”

“I might,” he interrupts, face and graceless. Her gaze snaps to his, and he looks away, feeling mortification hot in his cheeks, but he’s got to get it out. He’s got to. “Again, I mean. Ghouls, I don’t- I’m not good with ghouls.”

“Ah, shit.” She says it on a rough exhale, and he can’t look at her. He can’t. “Is that what this is about? MacCready, we coulda worked around that. Hell, we didn’t have to take the goddamn job in the first place. I told you before, I’m never going to make you work a job you’re not good with.” She hesitates for a minute, obviously casting back, and then adds, haltingly, “I know you told me it wasn’t a good plan, and maybe I didn’t take that seriously enough-”

“No way, Boss,” he says, because interrupting her isn’t anywhere near as bad as listening to her try to say that it’s somehow her fault. “Your plan was fine. The _job_ was fine. I was the one who couldn’t handle myself when you needed me. I was the one who screwed it all up.”

“Ah, MacCready,” she says, heartsick. “The only way you screwed up is in not telling me, pal.”

He grits his teeth. “I almost got you _killed,_ Boss.”

“You really didn’t.” When he doesn’t respond, she says, more forcefully, “You _didn’t._ You had my back a dozen times, and then when you couldn’t anymore I had yours. That’s how it works. That’s how it’s goddamn _supposed_ to work.”

“Just because I screwed up-”

“Everyone screws up! Anyone who says otherwise is either a fucking liar or they haven’t done shit worth mentioning.”

“ _You_ don’t.”

“Do,” she says promptly. He gives her a nasty look. “Scout’s honor, I do. Everyone’s got something that fucks them up sometimes. You learn to work past it when you can or work around it when you can’t, but you’ve got to _tell_ me so I can adjust. That’s all.”

He hunches his shoulders against the cold, wishing futilely for the familiar warmth of his old duster, left behind in the training yard along with all the rest of his ruined gear. He knows how he must look just now, too skinny and too young in just his undershirt, all pale scrawny arms and ribs you can count at ten paces. He wants his armor back. He wants the comfort of knowing that when she looks at him, the boss doesn’t see some kinda scared little _kid,_ trying to talk big like that’s gonna fool the real grown-ups into thinking he knows what the fuck he’s doing. He wants her respect, damn it.

_Well, maybe you should goddamn do something to earn it, MacCready, Jesus._

He swallows hard and squares his shoulders. “What’s yours, then?”

“Tight spaces.” She leans back against the wall, pulls her knees up to her chest and loops one arm around them. "Tunnels, elevators, stuff like that. I was never great with them but then when I got stuck in that goddamn-” She cuts herself off, rubs a hand across her mouth, like a nervous tic. She seems to realize she’s doing it and then drops it to her lap again. “Anyway, there was a thing, not that far back. It’s been worse since then. We run into something like that, chances are good I’ll let you take point. I don’t freeze, but I overcompensate, push too hard. Can be just as bad.”

“Oh.” Somehow, he didn’t expect her to answer - or not so honestly, anyway. Not with that raw, shaky look on her face, like she went back to somewhere she’d do anything to forget. Oh _fuck,_ and now he knows why she had him running the op once they hit the back rooms of that store back in Lexington. He’d known she was getting kind of nervy, not quite reckless but maybe not counting the cost the way she should; now he knows _why._ “Um.”

“Yeah.” She smiles up at him, steadying out a little. “Also, power armor. Can’t use it myself - small spaces, like I said - and I don’t do real great with people in it. You see this?” She swipes her tangled forelock away from her forehead with an impatient gesture, revealing the now-familiar melted blur of a burn scar on the left side. “Some asshole in power armor clocked me right in the goddamn face. Practically busted my skull right open; my buddies had to do a little fast ‘n loose first aid with a plasma gun just to cauterize it shut. Not my favorite memory. I'm mostly good with it, always happy to get a little of my own back in a fight, but every once in a while- Well. You know."

He definitely does. "Wonder how you made friends with the Brotherhood, if you can't stand power armor."

"It's a long and somewhat implausible story that I will definitely tell you about over a beer sometime." She smiles at him, a rueful little thing that tugs at the corner of her mouth. "Though you might want to keep an eye on me if we run into them again. I've been known to get mouthy when I'm nervous. Well." She grins. "Mouthier."

"You'n me both, Boss." He sighs and rubs his thumb against the heavy stitching on the top of his pocket. "Probably the same for me, really," he admits. "Just watching out, I mean. I never froze before, not since-” Goddamn it. “Uh. Subways. Might be a problem.” _Fuck, just say it. She told you hers, she deserves to know yours. Just spit it out._ “That’s how I lost my wife, a couple years back. We were camping down there and they came outta nowhere and I froze and- Yeah. I made it out. She didn’t.”

She’s silent for a minute, her expression unreadable, and he silently begs her to say something, to say the _right_ thing, even if he doesn’t know what the right thing is-

“So what you’re saying,” she says slowly, after a moment, “is that underground is probably a pretty bad bet for the both of us.”

He’s so braced for sympathy that her not-quite-a-joke takes him almost entirely by surprise, and he barks out a laugh. “No freaking kidding, Boss,” he says, grinning at her a little loopily. Most people wouldn’t have been able to resist the urge to ask: _you had a wife? What was her name? Why didn’t you tell me?_ But the boss, she knows better than that. She’s treating his story the same way he treated hers: an unexpected gift, but not something that’s really relevant to the situation at hand.

“I’ll mark subways off the to-do list,” she says, and she’s grinning, too. “Considering.”

“That they’re usually filled with ghouls?”

“Yeah, there’s that.” She stretches her legs out with a sigh, rotating her left ankle until it gives with a satisfying-sounding _pop._ “So. We good now? Anything else we need to discuss? ‘Cause if you need another heart-to-heart, I am definitely here for you-”

He laughs and kicks the sole of her boot. “Heck, no.”

“Oh good,” she says, and mimes wiping the sweat off her brow. “‘Cause I would’ve, I’m a great person like that, but I am done with sharing feelings. For like, a year. At least. Hit me up then and we can try again.”

The unspoken implication that he’ll still be around that far off sends a shiver straight down his spine, leaving him feeling warm and foolish. There’s a little twinge at the back of his head - _you won’t be here that long, you know you can’t just stay on the road with her forever -_ but he ignores it. Problem for another goddamn day, as always. “I’ll put it on the schedule.”

“You do that.” She shifts, lacing her fingers together and pressing them outwards into a spine-popping stretch, then slumps limply back once more. “If I wanna get clean I gotta get up, don’t I?”

A joke about sponge baths is right on the tip of his tongue, but Mac bites it back just in time. “Sorry, Boss.”

"Damn it," she says, and looks so comically despondent that she almost doesn’t seem the same woman as she was earlier, splattered with gore and wearing an expression of such grim determination that she could have been the fuckin’ reaper herself, come to his rescue when he least deserved it.

Then again, if she was all one thing all the time, he wouldn’t like her near so much as he does.

“Tell you what,” he says, and offers her a hand up. “You scrub up, and I’ll rustle us up some food.”

She takes his hand with alacrity and hauls herself to her feet. It lands her right in front of him, nose-to-nose with a grin like a sunrise. “Buddy, you have got yourself a deal.”

###### 

She’s down to just her undershirt and trousers when he gets back with supper, her arms bare and glistening from droplets of water falling from the ragged ends of her wet hair. She looks away from where she’s scrubbing vigorously at a particularly stubborn spot of grease and ash on her jaw to give him a welcoming smile and a nod that somehow indicates that she’ll be done soon, so he takes the dishes over to the mattress and settles down in the spot she had earlier, his back against the wall and his legs stretched out in front of him.

He puts his head down and focuses on his food, and definitely doesn’t let his gaze wander along the lean flat planes of her shoulderblades, the vulnerable-looking knob of her spine, the constellation of freckles decorating the expanse of ropy muscle in her arms. Just ‘cause she’s more naked than he’s ever seen her doesn’t mean it’s any kind of invitation to look.

No matter what other parts of his body might be trying to say, he thinks, shifting uncomfortably. It’s been a hard few days of travel since the last time he had a chance at some privacy, and it’s not the kinda thing he should be letting himself think about, especially not with things the way they’ve been. They’ve had enough goddamn awkward for one day without bringing his dick into the equation.

(Maybe he’ll sleep on his belly tonight. Just in case.)

She doesn’t put her shirt back on when she’s done, though, just uses it as a towel to scrub through her dripping hair and leaves it draped around her neck as she sits down cross-legged on the other end of the mattress. She doesn’t seem to notice the lapse, grabbing the plate he left for her and digging in with relish, but he can’t help it, his gaze going to her collarbones, the smattering of freckles on her forearms, the modest curve of her breasts before snapping away again, only to return and start the whole cycle over a minute later. It’s awkward as _fuck,_ and worse, it’s _embarrassing,_ acting like a kid on his first trip to a whorehouse just because his boss is showing a little skin. He’s usually better than this.

“I can grab your spare shirt if you’re feeling cold,” he says, when he absolutely can’t take it anymore.

She looks up, fork halfway to her mouth and still chewing the previous bite. “Mmm?”

_Drop it, MacCready,_ he tells himself, but it’s hard to think of a good cover with her staring at him like that. “I mean, just figured you must be freezing.”

She rolls her (bare!) shoulders in a lackadaisical shrug. “Warm in here,” she says, and shoves another bite of food into her mouth. “‘S fine,” she says, around her mouthful. “Don’ wanna get hair under my collar. Itchy.”

Right. The haircut. The haircut he promised her. Ah, _fuck._ “Makes sense,” he says weakly, and shoves another bite of food in his mouth to keep himself from saying anything stupid.

Anything _else._

She pauses, fork halfway to her mouth. “Don’t have to if it’s a problem,” she says cautiously, clearly picking up on his hesitation. “You said there’d be a barber down at Bunker Hill, right?”

“Nope, I’m good!” he says, and curses himself a little for how hastily it comes out. The last thing he wants is for her to think he’s weird around her, even if he kinda fuckin’ is. _Especially_ if he is. “Uh, I mean, unless you-”

“Nah, I trust you,” she says easily, and goes back to her supper.

_Right,_ he tells himself. _That’s that, then._

When they actually get to it, though, it doesn’t end up bad as he feared. They scrub up their dinner plates in companionable enough silence, and then Sole drags down one of the hay bales while Mac sharpens up his knife. She straddles the hay bale and finger-combs her raggedy hair back from her face, tilting back her head to give him an upside-down grin, and says, “Do your worst, doc,” and then it’s easy enough to focus on the task at hand, because be _damned_ if he’s going to let a challenge like that pass on by.

The finicky nature of the work keeps him distracted during the worst of it, and he’s able to more-or-less separate himself from the fact that the hair he’s trimming is attached to a living, breathing person. (Who smells like sweat and leather and shitty lye soap and has freckles all down the nape of her neck and _still isn’t wearing her fucking shirt,_ not that he’s noticed or anything.) Sole makes it easy (easier) on him by holding absolutely and impressively still, with the kind of control he’s only seen on other snipers, the quiet susurrus of her breathing a steady counterpoint to the occasional scrape and snick of his knife.

Eventually he’s done - or at least as done as he’s going to get - and brushes the last stray bits off the nape of her neck, lingering a little and not wanting to admit it. The cool, still slightly damp ends of her hair slide like silk over his knuckles, and he’s seized by a mad urge to slide his hand up further, stroke his rough fingers through the newly short mop, cup his hand around the back of her head and-

_And what, MacCready? Just what the fuck do you think you would do?_

He clears his throat and turns abruptly away, snatching his hand back to his side. “Take a look,” he invites, jerking his chin towards the mirror without looking at her. “Think I got it better than before, any road.”

“Buddy, anything would be.” She bounds up with alacrity, twisting around to peer this way and that at her reflection. He wipes off his knife and watches her out of the corner of his eye, torn between desperately hoping she approves and wanting equally desperately not to care. It's not like he's any kinda barber, like he told her, and it's not like the boss much fusses about looks at the best of times, but, hell. It's not like he doesn't know he's desperate for approval, okay. Doesn't mean he's gotta be obvious about it.

Still, he thinks he did a pretty damn good job, if he does say so himself. He had to cut it pretty short just to get it even after he got all of the burnt parts out, and there was only enough left to cover one side of her head, but it looks good like that, the left side all loose and wavy almost down to her collar (or where her collar would be, if she was wearing an actual goddamn shirt) and the right side just a bare auburn shadow, her scarred-up cheek and torn ear on full display. _Here I am,_ it says, _take it or leave it._ He probably could’ve covered up at least some of it, if he’d tried, but why bother? She never did.

“Shit, MacCready." She smiles at him over her shoulder in the mirror, and he honestly kind of wants to strangle himself a little because just the sight of it feels like the goddamn sun coming up. “You want a job?”

“Already got one, Boss.” He rubs the back of his neck, hoping like hell he’s not blushing. “Not bad?”

“Hell no! This is great.” She pokes a little at the one piece - a little shorter than the rest, thanks to her face-first introduction to the bonfire - that keeps falling forward over her forehead in spite of his best efforts. “Gives me a kinda Danny Zuko look, dontcha think?”

He has no idea who the fuck that is, but it does soften the rawboned lines of her face a little, and lends her a rakish air that, frankly, she doesn’t fucking need. She’s already charming enough as it is. “You look a little less like a raider, at least.”

She scrunches up her nose in mock-offense, but he can see a smile flirting around the corners of her mouth. “Yeah, yeah, it wasn't my best look. Little less likely to scare the locals now, though, right?”

Someone as scarred and well-armed as her is always gonna scare the type that’s gonna scare easy, and no haircut’ll change that. That wasn’t exactly his goal. Everyone else, though, well…

“I think you’ll do fine,” he says, and resolutely tears his gaze away before she can catch him staring. “You, uh, ready to call it a night?”

“Sure thing, Sweeney.”

He doesn’t try to parse that anymore than he does with any of her other off-the-cuff references - Old World shit, he’s gotta figure, probably stashed in some vault out wherever she came from. He just puts away his knife and sits down to start unlacing his boots, watching from beneath his lashes as she does the same. She (fucking _finally_ ) puts her shirt back on and he watches that, too, even if he hates himself for it a little, his heart thrumming in his ears over the familiar sound of her tuneless humming as her sleepy fingers fumble with the buttons.

Fuck, he shouldn’t be here. There’s another mattress _right there,_ it’s not like it’d be weird if he used that instead. Fuck, it’d probably be _less_ weird, right? They kept to their own at Greentop, night before last, and that’s probably what he should be doing now. Just because they did at the boathouse doesn’t mean- And why’d he even sit down on her mattress in the first fucking place, anyway? Goddamn, he’s probably making it weird _right now_.

_No weirder than staring at her like a kid with his first skin mag, you asshole._

He’s just about made up his mind to get up and get his own goddamn bedroll like a normal fucking person when he hears her say, “Probably going to get pretty cold tonight.”

His gaze goes back to her with a snap, and he finds her already stretched out on the mattress, half-burrowed into the blankets and looking at him steadily. He glances down at his hands, feeling heat crawl up the back of his neck as he realizes that his dithering didn’t go unnoticed. _Fuck,_ why’s he always gotta be such a fucking _kid_ about things-

“I’m just saying.” The blankets rustle as she shrugs. “It’s January. Even I wouldn’t be averse to a little extra body heat if you wanna share.”

It’s an out. He knows it’s an out, and she has to know that _he_ knows it’s an out, but he didn’t survive his teens by ignoring a chance to save face when someone hands it to him on a silver platter. He nods shortly, setting his boots neatly at the end of the mattress where he won’t trip over them first thing in the morning, and crawls under the covers next to her, his face flaming. She makes a sleepy noise of approval and rolls over, giving him the warm, narrow line of her back, then blows out the lantern.

It’s not until her breathing evens out into true sleep that he allows himself to relax, his body molding back against the familiar curve of her spine. _You’re such a fuckup,_ he tells himself, pressing his cheek into the pillow he made of his balled-up jacket. _You’re gonna ruin the best thing that ever happened to you, you complete fucking moron._

But even he can’t curse himself out for but so long, and eventually the warmth, and the steady thrum of her pulse, starts to pull him down into slumber. The last thing he thinks, before the hazy dark claims him, is that her blanket sort of smells like them.

###### 

He wakes up once, in the middle of the night, with Sole’s cold nose pressed to the back of his neck and her arm lashed tight around his middle. He shifts slightly, to move away or closer he doesn’t know, and she makes a sleepy noise of annoyance and throws a leg over his calf, pinning him more thoroughly into place before relaxing once more against his back. Awake, she’s always careful with him, in her way. Asleep, her body speaks for itself.

_Fuck it,_ he decides, and shifts her arm to a more comfortable spot around his ribs before he goes back to sleep.


	11. Chapter 11

It takes them two days to get to Bunker Hill, though they probably could’ve done it in one if the boss really wanted to push it. Mac was more than halfway figuring she would - she had that look in her eye, the one that said she was considering doing something inadvisable - but then the old power station came into view, and she got distracted. By the time they finish clearing out the bloatfly swarm, and then cleaning up from the inevitable disgusting results, it's late enough that even Sole isn't going to push her luck.

Of course, Mac kinda suspects that their choice of campsite was more of a deciding factor than the impending sunset, but he's not going to complain about not having to trek through raider territory after dark. Bunker Hill's got their accords, sure, but he and the boss don't exactly look like a caravan, either. Odds are fifty/fifty on whether the locals decide they're feeling unfriendly, and the way their luck's been going recently, Mac's just as glad of the chance to get some rest and come at it in daylight.

Sole disappears into the power station more-or-less immediately after they're done scrubbing up, and Mac smiles to himself as he gets to work setting a fire and prepping dinner. Mac's got a scavver's appreciation for anything that goes _beep_ , but Sole seems to enjoy taking stuff apart just as much as she does getting the scav when she's done. It's kinda sweet, actually. She doesn’t really seem like the sort to have hobbies like a normal person, but there they are.

She's not back by the time supper's done, and she doesn't reply to his low whistle, either. Must be pretty in deep with whatever she's fidgeting with; she's not one to miss a meal. So when he’s cleaned his own plate and she still hasn't appeared, he grabs her plate in one hand and his flask in the other and goes looking.

The main room is still a couple feet underwater, but the big turbines (or whatever they’re called, he’s hardly a fucking expert) are on raised platforms, and that's where he finds the boss. Or part of her, at least; all he can see is her legs and feet, sticking out from under one of the big machines where she's wriggled the rest of herself underneath. There's a quiet _clang_ and the sound of muffled cursing, and Mac laughs quietly to himself as he sits down on the steps.

"Hey Boss," he says, raising his voice to be heard over the hum of machinery. "I brought dinner."

"Just a minute," comes her distracted reply.

Mac smiles at her restlessly tapping boots. "I also brought whiskey."

A pause. "An actual minute." Mac laughs again, loud enough that she can hear him this time, and it earns him a grumbling sort of sigh. "What? If I stop here I might as well start over." A pause. "Actually, since you’re here anyway-”

He rolls his eyes sets her plate down clear of any splash zone. “What d’you need?”

“Pliers?”

Her pack's leaning up against wall, in what probably was easy reach before she buried herself halfway under a couple tons of machinery. She usually keeps her tools in one of the little side pockets, where she can get to them without having to uproot everything else, but damned if he knows which one. “A hint would be nice, Boss.”

An oil-stained hand appears from underneath the turbine and waves vaguely. “Left side.”

He starts to turn the pack to face him, then realizes something. “Left while it’s on, or left off?”

Another pause. “Off.”

He grumbles in the back of his throat and turns the pack back around, starting over at the top. He hits paydirt in the third pocket (along with three stripper clips, six coils of wire, and a jumble of assorted screws and spent casings) and slides the pliers across the floor into her waiting hand. “There you go.”

“You’re an angel of mercy,” she assures him, and the hand withdraws once more into the belly of the beast. “One minute. Five, tops.”

It’s more like fifteen by the time she emerges, streaked with oil from fingertip to elbows, but he expected that, more or less. He looks up from his notebook and nudges a bucket of water towards her with his toe. “You’re going to want that first.”

She twitches one cheek, reflexively rubs at it with the back of her hand, and then curses when she inevitably smears oil down the side of her face. “...you might have a point,” she admits, and catches the more-or-less clean rag he tosses her. “Cheers.”

He listens to her scrub up and then wolf down her dinner with one ear, struggling to describe a glowing one in his journal in appropriately kid-friendly terms. (So far he’s got ‘big, green, and glowing,’ which, while accurate, does sort of fail to convey a certain something about the entire situation.) A minute later, he feels a drop of water land in the back of his neck as Sole leans over him, peering curiously over his shoulder. "Whatcha doin'?"

He has to fight the urge to cover the page, which is ridiculous - he's written around her before, tons of times, and he's never felt the urge to keep it secret. Then again, she's never expressed any interest in it before, either.

"Journal," he says shortly, and then remembers the patient way she's sliced open her own vulnerabilities for him yesterday and reluctantly adds, "More like a letter, really. For some, uh, family back home."

He silently pleads for her not to ask, but he should have worried. This is the boss he’s talking about. "Capital Wastes, right?" Sole says, and drops cross-legged on the floor next to him, her shoulder brushing comfortably against his. "That's one hell of a letter. You planning to send it when we get to town?"

He could. The last one he sent off was nearly six months ago, now, and if anywhere's got caravans heading south this time of year, it's Bunker Hill. But… last time, he'd promised himself he wouldn't send word until he had good news to go with it. Not that the boss isn't good news all over, all by her lonesome, but she's not the cure. She's not why he came here in the first place, and he can't send another letter with nothing to report. He just can't.

"Maybe next stop," he says, and closes the journal back up. He can finish it tomorrow. “Hey. Ready for that whiskey?”

###### 

Facing Bunker Hill on a hangover was not, in retrospect, one of his brightest ideas ever.

“If I’d known it was going to be like this,” he mutters, following on her heels so she doesn’t manage to lose him in the crowd, “I woulda kept my da- darn flask to myself.”

“I don’t know what you’re complaining about,” she says, over her shoulder. “I made you coffee, didn’t I?”

“That sludge was _not coffee._ ” He rubs fitfully at his sternum. "Think my heart's still trying to pound out of my chest."

“Ah, army coffee.” She sounds nostalgic. “If you can’t stand a spoon in it, it’s not-”

She goes abruptly silent, and Mac sets aside his own grumblings to crowd close, worry sour on his tongue. “What? What is it?”

“Dunno,” she says, a little distantly. “Thought I saw- But nah. Probably nothing.”

The boss doesn't startle at _nothing._ Mac feels the hairs on the back of his neck rise. “Who was it?"

They get flagged down by Meg before she can respond, and Mac waits with badly-bridled impatience while Sole listens to the kid's usual spiel about a tour. "It'll get you a jump on the other traders! C'mon, it's just ten lousy caps."

"Sure, I'll take the tour," Sole says, and Mac bites back a groan, because he knows what comes next.

"Market's in the back, bar's in the corner, and the outhouse is over the wall," Meg recites, and snatches the caps out of Sole's hand. "Bye!"

Sole just laughs as the kid goes skipping off, not even bothering to pretend to be offended. "Aw, c'mon," she says, when Mac levels her with an irritated look. "Bet you weren't any better when you were her age."

Mac was worse, not that he'll ever admit it. And because he was worse, he damn well knows when someone's trying to distract him from a line of questioning. "Boss. C'mon. Who'd you see?"

She gives him a faintly annoyed look for his persistence, but when he just looks steadily back she sighs and glances away again. "Drover, near the gate." He starts to turn and look, but she catches him by the shoulder, tugs him back to face her. "He's gone, now, anyway. Slipped off while I was talking to the pipsqueak."

Damn it. "What'd he look like?"

"Denim jacket, cap, shades."

Shit, that describes half the damn crowd, around here. It's practically the teamster uniform. "And you know this guy?"

"Sort of. Last I saw him, he was guarding the gate at Diamond City."

It's not hard to follow her train of thought. "So what the heck is he doing out here?"

"No kidding, right? Plus…" He waits her out, and she sighs. "Thought I saw him again in Goodneighbor," she admits, after a moment. "At the time, I wondered if he had a brother or something. Now, though, unless his mother dropped triplets…"

Mac's only ever heard of twins in Old-World stories; the concept of triplets is, frankly, terrifying. "You think he's following you."

She nods, looking pretty damn grumpy about it. "Not really sure why, though. Who'd even bother tailing around a scruffy-looking merc like me?"

Mac gives her a disbelieving look.

"What?"

"You're kidding, right?"

She scowls at him. "No. What?"

Oh, boy. He's always known that she wasn't _from_ here, from here, no matter what she said back on day one; this just clinches it. "Ever heard of a little thing called the Institute? Everyone knows they've got eyes on anybody who's anybody, and you're not just 'some merc.' You're the freaking General of the Minutemen. I'd be more surprised if they _didn't_ have someone on you."

"Yeah, but." She waves her hands, the gesture muted and small in the space between them, a line drawn tight between her brows. "The things I've heard about the Institute, I would've thought they had more resources. I mean, reusing the same tail? That's small-time. Amateur shit. If that's guy's tailing me-"

" _If?_ "

"-then it's way more likely to be some raider gang that wants me dead. Which is most of them." She spreads her hands in a shrug, a little smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth like she's kind of proud of the fact. "What can I say? I'm good at what I do."

Well, that's the fucking truth. She wiped the Triggermen off the fucking map just in the first week they were gunning together, and who knows what kinda swathe she was cutting before she took him on. Hell, they're on their way to kill a bunch more raiders _right now._ Even the mercenaries aren't going to be happy with the all the free labor going around; groups like the Gunners _like_ having all the raiders and ferals around, because it keeps them in caps. That's why Captain Wes decided to hit Quincy in the first place, wasn't it? To get rid of the competition. Cheap, shitty tactics to hit a civilian target just to make a point, but 'cheap, shitty tactics' are kinda the Gunner trademark, so-

_Nope, not thinking about it._

"Either way, it's not a problem for today," Sole says firmly, heedless of his train of thought. "Whoever they are, they're not going to make a move in the middle of a crowded settlement. We've got other shit to worry about."

"If you say so, Boss," he says, and quietly decides to do a little asking-around of his own, all friendly-like. S _omeone's_ usually happy enough to open their yap, if the price is right. "What's our plan, anyway?"

"Well, we should sell down and restock while we've got the chance, obviously - you're good to handle that?" He nods. "I've got that business with the ferals to settle with Deb, and then I think I'll see what I can do about making friends with the locals. The way I hear it they're not too fond of the Minutemen up this way, but I bet there's something I can do to change their minds."

Mac looks sideways at the amused quirk of her mouth, the lazy confidence in her body, and thinks: _I'm not taking that bet._

"Try not to work for free," he advises her. "Teamsters aren't like your usual folk; they're not interested in a handout. They won't respect you if you don't drive a hard bargain."

"Is that so?" Sole looks at him, a lazy turn of the head like a deathclaw catching the scent, and he feels himself flush at the look of approval that warms her rawboned face. "MacCready, you are just full of surprises."

"That's me, Boss," he says, and turns away from the slow burn of her gaze, hoping desperately that she can't see him blushing. "Here to help."

###### 

Later, after they've secured a room for the night and spent way too many caps at the bathhouse, they make arrangements to meet for supper and split up, Sole to handle her business and Mac to take care of their haul. Some of it he sets aside to sell elsewhere - all the Jet goes to Goodneighbor, obviously, and old Solomon will pay a premium for any other chems they've got - but Bunker Hill isn't gaining ground as a trading post for nothing. For a lot of the outer settlements who wouldn't dream of trying to send someone all the way up to the Great Green Jewel, the teamsters out of Bunker Hill are their first and last line of supply. Weapons, armor, ammo, mods, Sole's endless collection of stripped-down machine parts… If it can be used for food, fuel, or defense, they're buying.

A few hours later, his pack's all but empty, he's carrying more caps than he's ever had at one point in his _life_ , and the boss gave him full latitude to spend as much of it as he needs to restock. Not that he's going to go crazy with it, or anything - cap saved is a cap earned and all that jazz - but even with their new gear there's a few things they could definitely afford to pick up. A new scope, for one, to replace the one that got smashed up during their raid on the satellite station, and a more ammo, for another. Cricket's happy to take care of both _and_ let him use her work station when he's done, especially since he pretty much cleans out her entire stock of .308. _One of these days, the cost of that stuff's going to outweigh the convenience of being able to swap clips mid-fight,_ he tells himself, but today's not that day, so fuck it. Not like fifty cal comes any cheaper, and he'd hate to see her drop back to .45 in that combat rifle and lose some of her punch. She's out there on the front lines drawing fire; she deserves to be able to hit back with everything she's got.

He doesn't much worry about food or water: Sole's still got her little purifier, and they've been doing well enough foraging on the road. Prepping their own does mean he's running a little low on salt, though, so he goes to dicker some down from Old Man Stockton - who takes one look at face, sniffs, and tries to double the price on him, like he's some sort of dumb kid who doesn't know any better. Clearing up _that_ misconception takes the better part of an hour, but in the end he has his salt and most of his caps, so he's feeling flushed and victorious when he makes his final stop over at Kay's place to see about refilling their stimpaks.

She's seeing a patient when he comes up, a greaser with a jacket that’s more patch than leather, and waves Mac away with a distracted, "Just be a minute." He nods sympathetically to the guy in the chair - his face is all cut up, poor bastard, like he got into a fight with a shrapnel mine and lost - and ambles off to a corner to wait, browsing through the jumbled shelves of stuff she's got for sale. Chems and medical supplies, mostly, but there's an interesting selection of guns and gear that she probably picked up in trade somewhere along the way. He casts an appreciative eye at a leather jacket she's got hanging from a hook - dark brown leather, butter-soft and lined with flannel, fucking nice - then fingers a roll of medical tape thoughtfully. They have gotten into more than their fair share of trouble lately; it wouldn't hurt to have some extra supplies on hand. Just in case. Stimpaks can't do everything.

"All done." Kay's grunt cuts through his train of thought, and he shoves his hands in his pockets, starts ambling back up to the counter. "Keep it clean, use a half a stimpak twice a day - not a whole one once a day, I'm serious here, it does make a difference - and if it gets infected, don't come back to bother me about it, because I'm _not a goddamn doctor_."

"Yes'm." The guy's face is red and puffy from the stitches, his blue eyes almost as faded as his jeans until he gingerly slides a pair of shades onto his swollen nose. "What do I owe you?"

"I’ll just put it in your tab, Jacko. If you try and count caps right now we'll both be here all day. I do have other customers, you know. People smart enough not to end up face-first in a pile of glass."

"Man had my caps _and_ my beer, the hell was I supposed to do, just let it go?" Kay glares at him wordlessly and points to the door. "I'm going, I'm going." He staggers a little going around the corner, and Mac catches him automatically, shouldering the bigger man's weight for an awkward second before he manages to right himself. "Hey, thanks, man. You're a lifesaver."

"Sometimes." A little amused, Mac pats his shoulder and steps away. “Be careful out there."

"Roger wilco."

The greaser stumbles out, and Mac exchanges an amused look with Kay. "Business is good, huh?"

"Business is _always_ good, with idiots like that around." She rolls her eyes. "How about you, MacCready? You still running with the Gunners?" 

The distaste in her voice is palpable, and not for the first time, Mac wishes someone would've said shit like that _before_ he signed on. Every other time he’d come through the Commonwealth, people always talked about the Gunners like they were real, proper soldiers, something to be proud of. Not like those Minutemen, who didn’t know their ass from their elbow, the way people told it. And then they wiped out the Minutemen and suddenly it was all ‘don’t cross those sonsabitches’ and ‘they’re no better than raiders’ and where was that shit before, huh? How the fuck was Mac supposed to know what he was getting himself into, when everybody used to fall over themselves to kiss their camo asses? Shit, he was desperate for caps when he got here, sure, but if he’d known then-

Well. No scope like hindsight, that's for damn sure. And nothing to do but keep pushing forward.

"Nah, I'm out. For good."

"Bet that wasn't easy."

He has to bite down on a bark of bitter laughter. "Let's call it a 'work in progress.’”

She gives him a vaguely sympathetic look. “Not known for lettin’ go, are they?”

“One way to put it.” And hey, he can’t ask for a better segue, so: “If you happen to know anyone who’s got a bead on them, there’s caps in it for you, okay? Or whoever.”

This time her look is considerably more cautious. “What kind of bead?”

“Any kind you got. But I’ve got business with a captain, name of Winlock. I’d like to have a little chat with him, settle out our debts fair and square.”

Kay gives him a knowing look. “Debts, is it?”

He gives her an innocent one in return. “Ready to be paid in full.”

“Well.” Kay starts wiping her hands off on a mostly-clean rag. “I don’t have anything for you, but they do come through on occasion, as you know. I could maybe keep an ear out.”

With a deposit, of course. He slides the pouch of caps he prepared for this exact purpose across the counter, his grin as sharp as the boss’s blade. “For your consideration.”

“Much obliged.” She makes the caps disappear, her face calm as if nothing of note is happening, and changes the subject. “Saw you stocking up with Cricket. You’re still on the job?”

Mac is good at precisely two things: smarting off when he should probably keep his fool mouth shut, and shooting the shit outta stuff. Not exactly a diverse skill set. "Yeah. Actual merc jobs this time. Cleaning out raiders, ferals, that kinda thing.”

“Ferals?”

He grins at her. “If you’re looking for someone to pick up that contract your wife has out, you can save it. Boss and I already took care of it. She should be arguing with Deb about the price right about…” He makes a show of looking at his empty wrist. “Now.”

“Ah, so you’re with that redheaded pistol Meggy conned out of ten caps earlier.”

He has to stifle a laugh at that bit of description. The boss is a hell of a gun, yeah, but not some measly little pistol. A shotgun, maybe, with as big a kick as her sawed-off. Or a fucking missile launcher.

"That's the boss. Don’t worry, though: her bite’s even worse than her bark.”

“My favorite kind,” Kay grins back. “Good. Deb’s been on about those fuckin' ferals for _months._ Can't hardly get a team north, between them and the muties."

Mac coughs into his fist. "Yeah, those, uh, those aren't going to be a problem either."

"No shit." Kay looks at him again, more evaluatively this time. "You been keeping real busy, then.”

He shoves his hands in his pockets, oddly bashful for no particular reason. "Yeah, well. Caps are good."

"Sure, I hear that." She shrugs and finishes wiping off her hands, tossing the rag to the side. "Well, I can help you spend a few of 'em, anyway, so. What can I get for you?"

"Stimpaks," he says, back on firmer ground now. "But we've got the hypos. Just need a refill."

"Scavver," she says - but it's with appreciation, not disdain. One of the many reasons he likes Bunker Hill better than DC is because at least in these parts, doing what it takes to survive isn't seen as some kind of moral failing. "Sure, I can take care of that for you. Lemme see what you got."

He gladly unloads the roll of empty hypos for her to poke over, running calculations he's done a half-dozen times already in his head as he does so. Going rate for refills is around fifty in DC, forty in Goodneighbor, Bunker Hill should be somewhere in the middle with all of the trade going through, so for a half-dozen stimpaks they should be looking at-

"Two-seventy," Kay says, and he awards himself a mental point. "But I'd be willing to consider a bulk discount if you're looking at picking up something else."

_Shouldn’t have been so obvious about poking through the shelves,_ he thinks, but hell, he _was_ thinking about some extras. Boss was really clear that resupply was in his hands, and that he should take as much as he needed out of the general fund to make sure they were covered. He doesn’t like the ‘spending’ part of having caps, but… She’s trusting him to handle it. He’s not going to shortchange her and risk a fuckup in the field. It’s his job to look after her.

“Some medical tape, maybe,” he says. “And I saw you have a couple bags of skeeto spit…”

They dicker pleasantly for a while, neither of them going as hard as they both know they can, not with a couple hundred caps already on the table and the promise of repeat business. _Should teach a few lessons to that asshole Stockton._ When it’s done, MacCready’s got damn near enough for a new medkit, so she throws one in for free and counts out his total as she starts packing it up.

“-and the Rad-X, that’s sixty each, so with the discount that’s… five-forty?”

MacCready nods, counting out the caps from Sole’s pouch and keeping himself from boggling at the contents only because he’s been dealing with it all day. Sole’s got more quantums in there than he’s ever seen in one place outside of the Gunner vault. A month ago, he was lucky to so much as see a goddamn cherry, and now he’s counting out quantums like it’s nothing. “Yeah, I got the same.”

“Sweet.” Kay closes up the medkit and hands it to him with a flourish. “Pleasure doing business, as always. Anything else I can get you while we’re at it?”

“No,” he says, and then pauses. “Well, maybe.” He jerks his thumb over his shoulder, cursing to himself even as he does it. “How much are you asking for that jacket?”

###### 

He’s still cursing half an hour later, when he dumps everything back in their room and makes his way down to the mess hall. The coat is carefully folded away at the bottom of his pack, where Sole won't find it even if she goes rummaging, but he's still reciting excuses to himself as he hurries across the common, shivering from the bite of midwinter wind in the back of his neck. He could tell her it's a spare, in case their gear gets all messed up again. Or maybe he's planning to sell it - or sell _his_ coat, and take that one as his spare. Yeah, that could work. Hell, he could actually do that; she might give him a bit of a look, sure, but she'd never actually _say_ anything. And he could put the caps from the jacket into her share - she'd never know the difference, probably, as much as she carries and as bad as she is at haggling when it counts. That'd be the smart thing to do.

And he's almost convinced himself that that's what he's going to do - until he walks into the mess hall and sees her there at the end, hunched into her too-big jacket and shoveling food into her face with a kind of studied determination. And he knows, he _knows,_ that he isn't going to do the smart thing after all.

She doesn't look up when he slides into the seat across from her, his tray hitting the table with a loud clatter, but she does smile a little and take her hand off her pistol. “All good?”

“No problems.” He eyes the pistol - a souped-up little ten mil she usually only pulls when she's trying to be quiet, which isn't as often as he'd like - and breaks open a piece of bread. “You?”

“Some of the locals were friendlier than I’d like.” She takes the pistol and slides it away into her back holster, shrugging to resettle it against the small of her back. “I had to explain to them that a woman alone is not necessarily looking for company.”

Her head’s still turned, fussing with the ends of her coat, and Mac eyes the now-familiar mess of scars on the side of her face, the ruin of her ear. She left her rifle behind in the room, along with her new chestplate and all her extra ammo, but the shotgun on her thigh ain’t subtle, and line of her shoulders is just bulky enough under her coat that any jackoff should be able to see that she’s wearing armor.

“Some people are idiots, Boss.” Her crack of laughter startles a drifter eating at the next table, who eyes them furtively before going back to his own meal.

“That’s the goddamn truth,” she grins, and goes back to her meal. “So tell me, we come out ahead after restock?”

He snorts at her. “Who do you think you’re talking to?”

“Right, forget I asked.” She looks way too amused. “How about, ‘pick up anything interesting?’ That a better question?”

“Few things,” he says, and thanks God or whoever that she’s so focused on food when it’s in front of her, and thus isn’t paying attention to his complete and utter lack of a poker face. “Ammo, salt, medical supplies... uhhh... oh yeah, and a new scope, told you I was gonna need one of those.”

She snorts around a chunk of brahmin meat. “Please tell me you at least got an upgrade.”

“On your dime, so sure.” He pets his rifle affectionately. “Bet I could hit the cap off a bottle at half a mile out, with this baby.”

He can see the quirk of a smile tugging at the apples of her cheeks. A lot less hollow than they used to be, when they first started gunning together. At least he can say he’s kept her fed. “I don’t doubt that for a minute.”

Awkward as always with her easy praise, he nudges at her boot under the table. “What about you? Productive day?”

“Not as good as yours, big spender-" She waggles her eyebrows. "-but sure. Settled with Deb for the training yard job - yes, we did get paid, you can stop looking at me like that - and nosed around a bit. Even managed to get in a chat with Kessler.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, it was… interesting.” Sole pokes thoughtfully at the last piece of tato in her bowl. “Not sure how I feel about this payment deal they’ve got with the local gangs, but that’s their business. Reading between the lines, though, I’d lay odds that someone’s stopped playing by the rules. I heard a couple rumors about people going missing, the last couple months. And Kessler was nervous. Not hiding it very well, either.”

That _is_ interesting. If the Bunker Hill accords are failing… “Which way?”

“Across the river, down around the airport. There’s not much out there at the moment, but hell, that just means it could be anyone.” Sole rolls her shoulders in a shrug. “Might be raiders. Might be ferals. Might be fuckin’ mirelurks. Either way, not our problem.”

“No?” Mac can’t resist needling at her a little. “What happened to ‘truth, justice, and the American Way?’”

“That’s Captain Cosmos.” She smirks and takes another bite of stew. “I’m all about helping people, sure - when they need my help, or at least when they’re willing to pay for it. Kessler’s neither. Give it a month or two, and if she doesn’t sort it by herself we might have a nice fat contract out, but they won’t thank me for the help. And we’ve got our own shit to worry about.”

True. MacCready hasn’t forgotten that they’ve got a date with some kidnappers: tomorrow is supposed to be the hostage exchange, and he has a feeling that whatever sort of mayhem the boss is planning to rain down on _that_ little party, it’s not going to be a walk in the park. “That’s oddly practical of you, Boss.”

“Hey, I can be practical. Pragmatic. Even sensible- Okay, you don’t have to laugh _that_ hard.”

“Uh-huh.” He grins helplessly across the table. “Alright, Miss Sensible, what’s the plan?”

“Well, I’ve got an invite to drink with some of the guards up top the Monument, later. Apparently it’s a _very_ exclusive club. I should be flattered to be included.”

Last he heard, some of the locals liked to congregate up there and take potshots at mirelurks down by the water’s edge. Bunker Hill’s reigning sniper has a standing offer of a bottle of quantum for anyone who can beat him. Mac thought about it, last he was here, but the Gunners didn’t like him showing off his skills when he wasn’t working.

“Don’t shame them too hard, Boss. A man needs _some_ pride to get through the day.”

“We’ll see.” Her teeth gleam in the low light coming from the fireplace. “What about you, hotshot? How are you spending your night in civilization?”

“Well, I’ve got a pocketful of caps and a half bottle of whiskey, figure that should be enough to buy my way into whatever game they’ve got running.” He shrugs as he takes a swig of his beer. “It’s what I usually do, place like this. Gossip’s worth its weight in caps, and there’s no loose tongue quite like an old-timer who’s drunk and on a winning streak.”

“Ain’t that the fuckin’ truth.” Sole laughs as she starts mopping up her bowl with a piece of bread. “Funny to think about, isn’t it? No matter where you go, people are just about the same anywhere. Apply the right kind of pressure, and you can get just about anything out of anybody.”

"Yeah." Mac spoons another bite of stew into his mouth and chews morosely, thinking about the bundled folded at the bottom of his pack, worth damn near half his bribe fund. "People sure do dumb stuff sometimes."

###### 

Big Joe Savoldi is happy enough to deal him in when Mac sidles up an hour later, holding up his bottle of whiskey like a flag. Mac plays the first few hands more or less in silence, nursing his drink and content to take in the familiar atmosphere of insults, bullshit, and cigar smoke filling the air of the back room. The weather’s shit, the food’s shit, the booze is cheap but the ammo ain’t - all the usual stuff, the same crap he’s heard a thousand times and could probably repeat in his fucking sleep. It’s comforting, in a sense. This is where he really belongs.

It’s also all completely fucking useless.

He plays through a few more hands, just to be sure, but it’s pretty clear that nobody here has anything he can use. This far into winter, a lot of the locals have taken the long road south just to get away from the weather, and the ones that are left are either low enough on the totem pole that nobody tells them shit, or experienced enough to keep their damn mouths shut, even halfway into a bottle. Entertaining, yes. Useful, no. Might as well cut his losses and call it a night.

He’s just cashed out his last hand and is leaning on the end of the bar, swilling on the dregs of his whiskey and thinking idly about maybe joining Sole up the monument to show those cocky sonsabitches how it’s _really_ done, when he feels someone slide onto the barstool next to him. It’s the greaser from earlier, the one with the cut-up face. It’s at the ugly stage of healing, all red skin and swollen stitches, and it gives him a sort of lopsided, lumpy look, like a ragdoll with half the stuffing worn out.

Mac never did learn to keep his mouth shut, because even though the man looks like a mile of bad road and is carrying a revolver like he knows how to use it, Mac still can’t resist a sly, sideways, “You’re looking better.”

Lucky for him, the greaser - Jacko, Kay called him - doesn’t seem to take offense. “You’re a shit liar, friend, but I’ll take it.” Jacko flags Tony down for a drink, raises one finger and then tips a quizzical look at Mac. “Wet your whistle? I owe you, since you kept me off my ass earlier.”

Mac rattles his mostly-empty bottle and shrugs. He was planning to leave, but hell. Free’s free. “Sure. Never say no to a free drink.”

“My kinda guy.” Jacko raises a second finger to Tony, who shoots him an irritated look but grabs another glass from under the bar. “So what brings you into Bunker Hill… MacCready, wasn’t it? Caught your name on the way out the door,” he explains, when Mac gives him a cautious look. “Eyes might be shit-” He taps the earpiece of his shades. “-but my ears work just fine.”

Mac acknowledges this with a tip of his head. “Same thing as every other poor bastard,” he says, after a moment weighing his answer. The man seems friendly enough, but Mac doesn’t know him. “Just passing through. Boss had some business to settle, figured we’d restock while we had the chance.”

“Boss, huh? And here I thought you were the type to be your own man.”

There’s a weird uncurrent to his words: not quite flirtation, exactly, but still a weird smear of some kind of insinuation. Mac feels his hand tighten around the neck of the bottle. “I’m the type that likes to get paid.”

“Who isn’t?” The guy brays a laugh, slapping his knee like he just said something hilarious, and Mac shares a vaguely disgusted look with Tony as he brings over their drinks. A couple of weeks on the road, and he managed to forget how fucking irritating people who aren’t the boss can be. “Well, here’s to getting paid, then.”

“Cheers,” Mac says shortly, and takes an inadvisably large gulp of the mystery drink - which turns out to be damn near paint thinner, _holy fuck._ “What the- heck is this?”

Jacko just laughs harder. “Local moonshine,” he says. “Think they let little Meg take over the still a few months back. Got a kick, don’t it?”

“It, uh, it does at that.” Throat still raw, he steels himself and takes another large sip. The faster he finishes his drink, the faster he can get out of here and back to their nice quiet room. “Wouldn’t try selling this up to Diamond City. Once you’ve had Vadim’s brew, it’s kinda hard to go back.”

“Shit, that’s the truth. So, you get up that way often?”

They chat for a few minutes; never let it be said that MacCready’s an ungrateful son of a bitch, and he knows how the game is played. They’ve been around a lot of the same blocks, no surprise there, and it turns out Jacko used to drink at the Combat Zone, back before it went sour. Mac takes great pleasure informing him that it’s out of business now, and the story of _that_ little showdown takes up just enough time that Mac won’t look like a complete jackass when he calls it a night.

“-and then we took off the next morning. Think the boss offered Cait a job, if she ever needs a place to hole up, but she wanted to go it on her own for a bit.” He shrugs and drains the rest of his drink. “Hell, maybe she’ll roll up one day and I’ll be out of a job.”

“Oh, I doubt that.” The weird undercurrent is back in Jacko’s voice, and Mac has to fight not to frown at him. “The Cait I remember tends to talk with her fists, and the way I hear it, you’re one hell of a _gun._ ”

The emphasis on the last syllable is unmistakable, and Mac tenses up fast, doesn’t even try to hide it. “You got something to say, man, just fu- spit it out.”

Jacko holds up his hands defensively. “No, man, nothing like that!”

Mac doesn’t relax. “So what _is_ it like?”

“Might’ve heard on the grapevine that you’re looking for word on some old friends of yours, that’s all.” He looks somewhere between guilty and smug, like he knows Mac won’t take kindly to a stranger prying into his business but also like he’s got something too good to pass up and he knows it. “Am I wrong?”

“Depends.” _Fuck_ if Mac’s going to hand it to him that easy. “On what you might have for me.”

“We-ell.” Jacko turns on his stool, stretches out his legs, ostentatious. “Might be I take the run out the western corridor on the regular. Might be I heard tell of a new Gunner base went up, other side of the river. Might be I heard the name of the new Captain in charge.” He grins, heedless of the way it pulls grotesquely at his stitched-up face. “Might be it’s someone you want to find.”

Every instinct he has says that this guy can’t be trusted, that he should turn and walk away. But they both know he’s not going to do that. Not if there’s a chance it’s legit.

“How much?” he says, and Jacko smirks back at him, slow and cocky and so fucking smug.

“Why don’t we go somewhere a little more private and figure that out.”

###### 

Sole’s already asleep when he stumbles back to the room later: rifle in hand, back to the wall, that’s his girl. There’s a bottle of quantum sitting on the nightstand, half-drunk and glowing faintly; Mac grins at it even though the uneasy roil of his stomach.

Never doubted her for an instant.

He’s careful to keep his steps quiet as he crosses the room to his own bed, but she’s dead to the world. He sits down on the edge of the mattress to fumble at his boot-laces with drink-clumsy fingers - and then goes still, head hanging, just staring off into space.

Fucking _Mass Pike Interchange._

He doesn’t doubt that the intel is good. He and Barnes scouted the site, back when Winlock was just another lieutenant. Gunners didn’t work on the western side of the river much, but Winlock was looking to change that; he wanted to have his territory all scoped out, so he’d know exactly what to ask for when he earned his bars. Mass Pike was the best of the list: high ground, easily secured, with limited access points and clear sight on one of the main roads heading west. He wrote Winlock the recommendation himself.

That’s what pisses him off the most, when he thinks about it: Winlock knew why he left, knew that he was still around and he’d be carrying a grudge, and he _still_ set up in a base that Mac goddamn scouted for him. The fucking _balls_ of that guy! He’s so fucking arrogant, so sure of himself, that he never even saw Mac as a threat. Just another small-time, waster runt, to be shoved off and pushed around, just like everyone else in the Commonwealth. Bullshit!

No, the thing that pisses him off the _most_ is that Winlock was fucking right. Mac would never try to run a hit on that place by himself. He knows better than most how goddamn hard it would be to get through the kill box of all that open ground on the approach, and since Winlock’s promotion he’s almost certainly got men to spare for the forward guard. Mac knows how the camps are set up, and he could probably, _probably_ take out the ground base, but to get up the elevators? To clear the entire place? No way. It can’t be done. His only hope is to try and bribe his way out, and pray like hell he’s got caps enough to buy out his contract and pay off Winlock’s bad mood, while he’s at it.

And that Winlock won't put a bullet on his head and take his caps anyway, just to prove a point. Knowing that asshole, Mac can't say he likes his odds. If he had a second gun-

He finishes prying off his boots and straightens, staring blearily across the narrow strip of floor at the boss. Supposedly people look younger when they sleep - something about them being all relaxed, or whatever - but he doesn’t see it. She’s still sharp, still scarred-up and hard with it, still too fucking skinny from whatever trash she used to eat before she had him to cook for her. Sole looks young when she’s laughing: her whole face lights up with it, until you can’t help but join in, even when you don’t know what you’re laughing about. Asleep, the boss just looks like the boss.

_What’m I supposed to do about this, huh,_ he wonders, slightly despairing, ‘cause Mac, Mac’s not stupid. He knows that that trembling feeling in his gut means, the thud of his pulse in his ears. He’s been here before. At least with Lucy, he knew where he stood: she told him what she wanted from him, plain as day, and it was up to him to make her happy. Mac used to be good at that, once upon a time. It’s about the only thing that ever made him feel like a real man.

Then again, Lucy never did figure out what the fuck kinda asshole he became when he walked out of Little Lamplight the last time, so. Maybe not his best example.

_I don’t know what to do, Boss_.

His gaze traces the line of scar tissue down the curve of her face, remembering how pale and punchy she’d been from the pain and the battle high, the way she’d put herself in his hands and let him take care of her. She needs that, though she’d never admit it. She’s so busy throwing herself at one problem after another that she’d never stop to take care of herself, if he didn’t do it for her.

She’s given him so much, and never asked for a damn thing in return except his gun and his company. How could he take that away from her, just when she’s gotten used to having him around? How the fuck could he ask her for more?

_Tell me what to do._

Abruptly furious with himself, with his indecisive bullshit and his maudlin whining that sounds unbearable even inside his own head, he yanks his gaze away from her and flops backwards onto the mattress, fuming up at the ceiling. He never used to have problems like this. When he was mayor, he always knew exactly what he had to do and exactly how to do it, and nobody ever questioned him because why would they? He always handled things. He always knew the right way forward. He was the undisputed king of his little kingdom - only it turned out that the world was a whole lot bigger than he ever imagined, and he was just a little fish in a great big ocean after all. He couldn’t save his wife. Couldn’t keep his kid from getting sick. Hell, he couldn’t even keep his own hide out of trouble long enough to find the goddamn cure that took him away from his kid in the first place.

No wonder none of them ever wanted this, back in Little Lamplight. Being an adult is the fucking worst.

Already sick of his own self-pity, he heaves out a sigh and rolls over, putting his back to the rest of the room so he won’t be tempted to stare at the boss like a lovesick teenager. He flails a hand at the heap of blankets and starts to pull them up to his shoulders… only to come away with a strip of fabric, thin and silky and way softer than any blanket he's ever used. Curious, he holds it up to the faint trickle of light coming in through the grimy window. Dark grey, about as wide as his hand and as long as his spread arms, with some kind of fancy stitching at the ends to keep it from unraveling.

A scarf. Sole bought him a fucking scarf.

He presses it against his face, smells cigarette smoke and the sharp acid tang of fresh dye, and doesn't know whether to laugh or to cry. Of _course_ she noticed that he left his scarf behind at the training yard. Knowing her, she probably keeps a mental catalogue of all his gear and knows the second something goes missing. And of _course_ she bought him a new one when she realized it was gone _._ She’d probably blow it off if he tried to say something too: _promised I'd take care of the supply, didn't I?_ or maybe, _hey, I messed up your old one, fair’s fair._

Argh.

_I’m so screwed,_ he thinks, staring blankly up at the darkened ceiling. _So unbelievably, completely screwed._

Fed up with himself - and everything else in the goddamn world, while he's at it - Mac grabs the blanket and wraps himself up in it, like a bloodbug in a hatchling sac. After a moment, he grabs the scarf and wraps that around his neck, too.

Maybe if he's lucky, he'll strangle on it in his sleep.

###### 

He’s the first to wake up the next morning, decidedly un-strangled and feeling almost as obnoxiously warm as he does with the boss sharing his bedroll. He rolls blearily to his feet and just stands there for a moment, watching the steady rise and fall of her breath and running the ends of the scarf through his fingers like a talisman, before he sighs to himself and goes to unbuckle his pack.

He’s halfway through his breakfast by the time she shows up, eating with one foot on his bag and the other tapping restlessly against the floor, an overflow of nervous energy he can’t seem to control. _Just say something,_ he tells himself - trying to make it into an order, as sharp-edged and unforgiving as Mayor MacCready at his finest, and failing kind of miserably. _Just tell her about Mass Pike, and let her take it from there. She’s probably never NOT had an opinion about something in her entire fucking life, so if you let her fill in the blanks then at least you won’t have to ask-_

The scuff of a boot against pavement is the only warning he gets before someone cannonballs into him from behind. He flails for a moment, almost sending the rest of his breakfast flying, before he recognizes the familiar weight against his back, the wiry strength of the arm currently wrapped around his middle. “Um.”

“Best. Present. Ever.”

He can feel the sharp edge of the zipper pressed into the thin skin behind his ear. Thinks about mentioning the scarf. Thinks better of it. “You’re welcome.”

“Damn right I am." She squeezes tighter for a moment - he could swear to God he feels his ribs creak - and then she lets go, stepping away. Mac's not sure whether to be relieved or sorry, but he does manage to find a smile for her when she slides into the seat across from him, since she’s so obviously pleased. “Where did you even find this?”

"Doc’s place. She had all kinds of stuff there. I was guessing on the size, but I figured you wear about the same as me, so-” He forces himself to shut up. For about half a second. “So, uh. You like it?”

She looks at him like he's crazy. "Of course I fucking like it!" She straightens up and preens a little, running her hand through her hair. “Look at me, I look fucking badass.”

She does look good in it, he has to admit - not that she ever looks bad, but. He knew when he spotted it on the wall that the dark brown leather would set off real nice against the matte-black shell of her fancy new chestplate, but seeing it now, it’s, well, it's more than that. She’s still got that skinny, rawboned look to her, but she doesn’t seem quite so underfed anymore, either, now that she's not swallowed under that too-big coat. She looks… sleek, kinda. All pared-down and sharp, like the long edge of her boot knife.

“Looks good over your new gear,” he manages, and then shuts himself up by shoving a bit of fried tato into his mouth.

“Damn right it does.” She grins at him across the table and gestures vaguely towards her neck with her fork. “You’re not looking so bad yourself, hotshot. That kit looks good on you.”

He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror on the way out of the room earlier, and he knows what she means. He seemed… bigger somehow, or maybe older, with the dark clothes and the dark shades and his cap tugged low over his eyes. Almost dangerous. He looked like maybe he actually belongs here, tagging along at the boss's heels.

“Thanks,” he mumbles, inexplicably shy, and swallows his bite of tato. “It’s, um. Really nice.”

She waves that away with one careless flip of her hand. “Hey, I was the one who trashed your old one, getting ghoul guts all over it. Seemed like the least I could do.”

_Did I fucking call it or what?_ He pokes at his food, despairing. Why does she have to be so, so... like _this_? What the hell is he even supposed to do with that?

“Thanks,” he says again, inanely, and scrambles to change the subject. “So, uh, where we heading next, Boss? Rendezvous point for the exchange?”

“Yep.” She starts cutting up her food, her gaze falling into that thousand-yard stare she always gets when she’s plotting. “Dollars to donuts it’s an ambush and they don’t even have the guy with them, but I doubt it’ll be too far from their base. Fuckheads like that are too lazy to trek away from their rathole. All goes well, we should be done by tonight, tomorrow at the latest. After that?” She shrugs, takes a bite of her breakfast. “Should check on Starlight, make sure they’re not having any problems with the locals, and then... back to Diamond City, probably. If that works for you?”

Her gaze is open and easy when it lands back on him, and he swallows hard. _Just say it, you fucking coward,_ he rails at himself. _Just SAY it._

“Listen, uh, Boss-”

"Mornin’, General.”

Mac closes his eyes and curses with a speed and creativity that can only be mustered by someone who spent the better part of a decade learning to blister the ears off every waster mungo that stuck their nose in his door.

"Deegan!" Sole, on the other hand, sounds nothing but pleased. "Thought you'd be long gone by now."

"I'll leave when my business is done." The ghoul - Deegan - looks over at Mac, curious. "This your man? The one who could out-shoot you?"

"With one hand behind his back,” Sole says, grinning. “Deegan, this is my partner MacCready." Mac chokes on an ill-timed bite of tato. "Mac, this is Edward Deegan. He runs security for some crazy rich guy up in the city, looking for someone to handle some odd jobs here and there."

"Well, we're odd, that's for sure," Mac says, a little faintly.

"So I've been told." Deegan has that careful, measured way of talking that some of the really old ghouls have, like they think about every word before it comes out of their mouth. "Your boss is being stubborn. She hasn't realized yet that I'm extremely motivated to get what I want."

It could come out sounding like a threat, especially in that flat, gravelly voice, but there's a thread of fondness there, matched by the tick of a grin at the corner of Sole's mouth. She likes him. Mac hasn't known her all that long, but he still knows enough that she doesn't like a lot of people.

“I told you, I’ve got some stuff to take care of,” Sole says. “But I’ll at least check it out, when we’re up that way next. That’s the best you’re going to get.”

“I suppose it’ll have to do.” Deegan nods to them both, impartially friendly. “General. MacCready.”

“Look at you,” Mac says, when he’s gone. To his dying day, he'll refuse to admit he still sounds a little bit breathless. “Making new friends.”

“In all the wrong places,” she agrees. “This one might be the useful kind, though. We’ll see.” Then she frowns over the table at him. “Shit, sorry, almost forgot. You were gonna say something, right? Before Deegan showed up?”

_My partner MacCready,_ she said, and maybe she didn’t mean it, not like that, but-

“Nothin’ important,” he lies, and takes another bite of his breakfast. “So, what’s the plan?”


	12. Chapter 12

The plan goes like this:

They’ll get to the the rendezvous point early, so Sole can get the lay of the land and Mac can get into position with his rifle. Then, the raiders will either bring the farmer with them for an honest trade (doubtful) or, more likely, they’ll bring a couple bully boys to shake down the dumb fuck who shows up with the ransom. Either way, he and the boss’ll clean up all of the muscle, send their wayward kidnap victim triumphantly home to his family (if he's there), and find out where they’re holed up from the guy who’s left. Then once they’re done with that guy, they’ll hit home base - _before_ the others have time to notice anyone missing. Sole wants to send a message, the kind of message that means none of those raiders are going to be sleeping sweet Jet dreams tonight.

And for _once_ , the fucking plan goes off without a hitch.

The raiders don’t bring the farmer with them (surprise, surprise) but they clearly weren’t expecting any kind of real resistance, either, since the point man only brought two others as backup. It’s child’s play to drop the muscle, two quick pulls of the trigger, done and done - and then Sole has the point man all to herself, and all of the time in the world to be persuasive.

Mac, climbing gingerly down the rickety, half-rusted fire escape, hears the quick wet noise of a knife going into the back of someone’s neck and smirks to himself. Less than two minutes. Apparently she was _very_ persuasive.

“Find anything useful on ‘em?”

“Few caps. Bit of ammo. Penny-ante shit.” Sole looks up from the point man’s body and grins at him lazily over the tops of her shades. “That was some good shootin’, Tex.”

“Live to please, Boss.” He goes down onto his heels next to her and starts patting down the one she hasn’t gotten to yet. “So where’s the hit?”

“Monsignor Plaza. You know it?”

“Sh- shoot, yeah. Just up the way. Like ten blocks, maybe.”

She makes a satisfied noise. “Told you. Too lazy to go far.” She tosses him a couple of Jet inhalers, which he tucks away into his pocket to stash later. “Said they’ve got a pretty good force in there, over a dozen rats plus a couple of heavyweights. Should make things interesting.”

The last job he ran with the Gunners - well, the last he actually finished - was one of the rare legit contracts, a little raider nest off one of the main roads with almost a dozen guys. Barnes went in with four other guys plus Mac, and poor Skeet still lost an eye to a shrapnel grenade when Tolly didn’t call cover fast enough. That was just how it was, back then. You went in force and expected to lose some, because nobody got away clean.

And then there’s the boss, who looks at a bigger job, in a more fortified location, and thinks: _should be interesting._

“That’s one word for it,” he says, and grabs one last handful of ammo. “Ready to move when you are, Boss.”

###### 

They find an empty building about a half-block away and hole up for the afternoon, waiting for it to get dark enough that they’ll have cover to move. Sole takes a seat next to the window with the best view of the street and he settles in at her back, doing a quick strip-and-clean of his rifle while she does the same. Nothing worse than having your piece jam up in the middle of a firefight. Not that Mac would know anything about _that._

“Wonder if there’s any scav left in there, or if they’ve stripped it clean.”

“Bet they’re sitting on a pile of caps, at least.” He feels her shoulders roll in a shrug. “Either way, hotshot, you don’t have to worry about going broke on my watch. Weekly minimum, remember?”

“Trust me, I’m not worried.” He bumps back against her, teasing. “You sure know how to treat a guy right, Boss.”

“Well, I do try.” She hums lightly under her breath, working oil into the receiver. “You know, I wonder if this is one of the gangs that takes dues from Kessler.”

“This close to the Hill?” Mac makes a dismissive noise. “Gotta be. Why raid all the way across the river for ransom if you can pick off teamsters going right past your front door?”

“It is inefficient,” she agrees. “Counterpoint: raiders are fucking stupid.”

“Counter-counterpoint: raiders are _lazy._ ”

“Truth.” She makes a considering noise. “Maybe that’s why she was protecting them, when I was trying to nose around yesterday. Stupid.”

“You think?”

“Well, yeah. The less raiders around, the less she has to pay.” Her shoulders shift against his, and he knows she’s spreading her hands in a shrug. “That’s kindergarten math.”

“That’s what now?”

A slight pause. “Baby math. Kid stuff.”

He rolls his eyes. “Please tell me you didn’t say it that way to Kessler.”

“C’mon, hotshot, gimme some credit. I’ve got _some_ common sense.” Another considering noise. “Say, how many grenades would you say we have between us?”

He knows the answer to that one without even looking. “Not enough for whatever dumb sh- stuff you’re planning.”

Silence.

“Kinda need the building to still be standing if you want to get your hostage out in one piece, Boss.”

“MacCready, pal. Buddy. Light of my life.” She leans back against him, and he feels the weight of her head on his shoulder, like she laid it there to look at him upside-down. “Do I look like a woman who favors wanton destruction?”

If he turns, her face would be right against his. He doesn’t turn. “Boss, I think there’s picture of you next to that word in the dictionary.”

“Aw, you know me so well.” She leans up again, goes back to cleaning her rifle. “Fine, if you want to suck all of the fun out of it-”

"Weren't you the one just talkin' about common sense?"

"-then we'll just have to do this the hard way."

"Kinda figured." He catches the spare set of clips she tosses over her shoulder at him, fondness a warm well in his chest. "Like we ever do it any other way."

###### 

The farmer they’re there to rescue lights out of there like his tail’s on fire when Sole finally cuts him loose, after all the shooting’s over and done with. The boss tries to talk him into staying the night, or at least to get his cuts cleaned up a little before he goes stomping through feral territory, but the guy’s having none of it.

Mac can kinda sympathize with that, honestly. They must've had him for what, a week? He doesn't look too fucked up, so they must not've started on the really fun stuff, but still. A week in a place like this, and Mac would be climbing the fucking walls to escape, no matter what kind of helping hand someone was holding out.

So he goes, babbling thanks and apologies both, and Mac and Sole look at each other, shrug, and set to work clearing the place. They find a fucking tidy haul of caps, more Jet than he's ever seen in one place outside Hancock's office, more Psycho than he ever _wanted_ to see in one place anywhere, and so much ammo they can't even carry it all. And that's just the really _choice_ scav.

"Take anything you need, and I'll leave the rest for my people to pick over," the boss tells him, surveying the mess. "They can have a team up from Starlight in a day or two, take this place down to its component atoms."

He doesn't doubt that one bit. He's seen her work, when she's scavving: she can strip a robot down to nuts and bolts in the time it takes him to clean his rifle. He doubts her people are any less efficient. "Need, huh?" He fingers a sweet little revolver that someone just left lying around, on one of the counters. It’s a crying shame, really. "What about want?" 

She gives him a look over the tops of her shades, fond and indulgent. "Hotshot, you can take whatever your little heart desires."

Something flutters at the base of his chest, and he ignores it, grinning back at her sunny and bright. “In that case,” he says, and liberates a bottle of bourbon, too.

They end up making camp on the roof when they’re done. They’re not normally too picky about their lodgings, either of them, but even the upper rooms are a bit… much, after the months of raider occupation. After the third room with a human torso meathooked to the ceiling, Sole makes the executive decision to enjoy a little fresh air instead. Mac’s not feeling inclined to argue: there's no place in the entire goddamn building that doesn't stink of blood and bile, and he doesn't care if it fucking _snows_ tonight, he's not sleeping in there. Call him squeamish, whatever. He's not doing it. If the boss hadn't made the call, he would have.

It’s not too bad, though. There’s a decent little fire pit of sorts tucked out of the wind behind the remains of a stripped-out AC unit, with wood enough to get a really solid fire going and a little folding chair left behind by whatever raider used to sit guard duty up here. And they’ve got some cover for the cold: he finds some more-or-less clean blankets and the boss finds a couple of empty lengths of pipe, and between the two of them, they manage to rig up a pretty decent pole tent. Enough to keep out the wind, at least, and at this height that’s the biggest problem.

Once they get the fire started Mac settles in to start dinner, keeping one eye on Sole as she paces around the roof, muttering into her Pip-Boy as she gets the rest of their camp laid out. He's pretty sure she's recording a message for someone back at that Castle of hers, letting them know about the rescued farmer, the situation in Bunker Hill, another raider nest destroyed. She's done it a handful of times since they started gunning together; apparently she figured out a way to get her Pip-Boy to send it on automatic broadcast any time she's in range of a strong enough transmitter. Fuck if he knows how it works, but anything that keeps her from wiring herself into another radio tower is A-OK in his book. They've got enough people trying to shoot, stab, and maim them without bringing electrocution into the mix.

"-make sure anyone trading in Bunker Hill wears the stars. We'll get some nasty looks to start, but I want people to start getting used to us again. And we should cut the boarding fees up at Starlight, at least for a while. Six months, maybe. We're not operating at a loss, the water more than covers any measly caps we could get from-"

Always scheming, he thinks, and even in his own head it sounds terrifyingly fond. He remembers having to make those calculations - what to charge, how much, who to trade with, balancing their books like a goddamn tyrant because they were always so fucking close to the edge - but he doesn't have the chops for it, anymore. Maybe he never really did. Maybe he was just better than a bunch of other kids, which ain't exactly a high bar to set.

These days, he can barely look after himself and the boss. Fuck knows he can't even take care of his own goddamn kid.

"-finished up at the plaza. Think we'll cut north around Cambridge, check in on Starlight and then work our way back. I've still got some shit in Diamond City to sort out, but we'll probably be out at the Castle by the end of the month. Over and out."

Sole flicks the dial on her Pip-boy, ending the message, and then flops down to the roof next to him, her legs sprawling haphazardly towards the fire. With his little folding chair, it puts her head only a little higher than his hip, especially when she yawns and leans back on her hands, like she does now.

"All done with your check-in?" he asks, trying not to think about her casual use of 'we.' He's going to have to tell her soon, just- not tonight. They're headed in the same direction for a bit, anyway. "Thought you were going to miss dinner."

"Never happen. It's been a busy week, is all."

True. A week ago, they were in their way to Greentop, creeping past muties and haring off after distress signals. Her man back at the Castle, Preston what's-his-name, Garvey, he's probably got some catching up to do. Might have trouble believing even half of what he hears. Mac would, if he hadn't lived through it.

Then again, if this Preston's been working with her for a while, maybe he doesn't get shocked by much of anything anymore. Mac's only known her a month and some change, and already he feels like she's worn the surprise right out of him. _Expect the unexpected,_ that's what all the old strategy manuals used to say, but damn if those crusty old bastards ever met someone like Sole.

"Well, you're just in time," he says firmly, and hands her a bowl. "Bastards had some jerky that doesn't look too bad, too, so we'll be good for a couple of days without having to hole up and hunt."

"My hero," she says, a smile flirting at the corners of her mouth, and they settle in to eat.

Three nights in a row drinking is a bad call if you want to shoot straight in the morning, but he's got his bottle of bourbon and the boss has a flask of something that smells like paint thinner and neither of them have to post watch tonight, so. They futz around with the radio for a while, bouncing between Travis and the classical station like some demented game of digital hot tato, arguing cheerfully over musical tastes until _that_ turns into their third go-round of Was Elvis Presley A Genius Or Just A Lucky Hack. And since round _two_ of that argument almost came to blows, they quickly recognize the wisdom of calling it quits with a slug of liquor and a change of subject… Which might’ve gone better if Mac changed it to something other than Red Menace. Or if he didn’t badger her into handing over her Pip-boy so he could play a couple of rounds.

Or if he didn’t promptly smoke her high score on the first try.

“You fucking _cheat,_ ” she gasps in outrage, and lunges at him, scrabbling at the latch on the Pip-Boy like she’s going to physically yank it off of him. “No way! No fucking way you just did that cold!”

“I never said it was my first time playing!” he says, trying to shove her off but too weak with laughter to make a real go of it. “You think we don’t have terminals down in the Capital Wasteland? C’mon.”

“That’s worse! You’re worse than a cheat, you’re a goddamn hustler. Give that back.”

He finally surrenders his wrist into her keeping, belly aching with laughter and warm all over from booze and the nearby fire. “Not like we’re playing for caps, Boss. Though if we were,” he adds, unable to resist, “I woulda bet you double. That score is _pathetic._ ”

“Did I ask for your input? No I did not.” She finally gets the Pip-Boy off of him - to be fair, at this point he’s not exactly trying to keep her off anymore - and straps it back onto her wrist, glaring at him the whole while. “Whatever, it’s not my game. I ever get my hands on a copy of Zeta Invaders and you’re going _down._ ”

It takes everything he has not to make the obvious joke. If he was a hair less sober he would’ve done it anyway, and awkwardness be damned. “Are you sure? ‘Cause, Boss, you know I’d never question your reflexes in the field, but…”

“Shut your pie hole,” she suggests pleasantly, and shoves him out of his chair.

When the resulting impromptu drunken scuffle has been concluded, the chair is halfway across the roof but at least neither of them fell into the fire, so Mac’s calling it a goddamn win. The concrete under his ass is a lot colder than the chair had been, but the boss is a warm weight against his side, and somehow it just doesn’t seem worth it to get up and chase it down.

Silently, he offers up his half-empty bottle, a peace offering since her flask tragically tipped over after catching an elbow in the scuffle. She gives a little huff of amusement and takes it, her chin ducked to hide a smile.

The quiet lasts for another few minutes, passing the bottle back and forth in comfortable silence. It’s the best part of walking the roads, in his experience. Trapped up in a city, all people do is talk, talk, talk till their fucking jaws fall off, like all the hot air’s gotta hold up the walls _somehow._ But out here, there’s space for silence, and MacCready likes that best. Less room for him to open his fat mouth and fuck something up, that’s for damn sure.

Eventually, the boss shifts, straightening away from her comfortable slump against his arm and stretching out her legs with a groan. “Goddamn. I’m getting too old to be sitting around on roofs drinking in the fucking cold.”

He muffles his snort of amusement in his collar. “Too _old_? Didn’t you say you’ve only got five years on me?”

“It’s not the age, hotshot, it’s the mileage.” She shakes her head when he offers her the bottle back. “And I have _more_ than paid my dues when it comes to freezing my ass off for the cause. You ever tried to snipe a target at five below? My fingers were freezing to the fucking trigger. Seriously, fuck that.”

“Is this the part where we start bragging about past jobs? Because I’ve got a couple doozies.” He looks at the bottle, shakes the last few inches around, and then sets it aside with a regretful sigh. He’s gonna have a head tomorrow as it is, no need to push his luck. “To be honest, I wouldn’t have thought the cold would be so much of an issue for you. With, y’know.” He waves vaguely at her torso. “Thing.”

She bites her lip before replying, pretty obviously considering and discarding a few ill-timed jokes of her own, before saying very dryly, “My ‘thing,’ huh?” He glares at her half-heartedly - she knew fucking well what he meant! - but she just laughs. “Fucking five below, hotshot. In the middle of a blizzard. Even Captain Cosmos has his limits.”

Mac’s never actually experienced a blizzard. It’s like that old joke: “Yeah, buddy, I’ll take care of it next time it snows.” ‘cause, y’know, it never happens. Or at least not down here, anyway. He’s walked with a couple of drovers who used to take runs up past New New York, and supposedly up there, it never _stops_ snowing, all winter long. How could anyone live like that?

“I can’t imagine it,” he says, with perfect honesty, and Sole just laughs again.

“Not my favorite time either. But hey, you go where they pay you, and shoot who you gotta shoot to go home.” She grins over at him. “At least now we’ve both got proper winter gear, huh?”

Thus reminded, he hunches a little into his coat and tugs restlessly at the end of his scarf. It’s warm and soft on the back of his neck, tucked neatly down inside his flipped-up collar, but he almost wishes it was stiff and scratchy like the ones he’s worn before, just so he could have something to complain about. Even if it’s only on the inside of his head. “Yeah, it’s- yeah.” He chews on his lip for a minute, trying to bite it back, but the words spill out of him anyway. “You know you don’t have to get me stuff, right? I don’t need you to look after me.” _Especially not when it’s supposed to go the other way around._ “I can take care of myself.”

“Oh, I know.” Braced for an argument, her easy agreement takes some of the wind of out his sails, and he watches as she stretches her feet a little closer to the fire, flexing her toes in her boots. “But I like doing it. It reminds me of-” She cuts herself off, abrupt as a rifle shot on a silent morning. “Other times.”

He gives it a moment, and when she doesn’t continue, silently prompts, “Better times?”

“Most would probably say so.” She leans back on her hands, tipping her face up to the cloudy night sky. She looks… not sad, exactly, but something close to it. Wistful, maybe. “Quieter, at least.”

Cautiously, sensing the landmine under his feet but unable to resist the temptation to creep forward, he says, “You don’t strike me as the type to enjoy the quiet.”

Her hoarse bark of laughter splits through the pop and crackle of the fire. “You’re not far wrong. But Nate talked me into it, for a little while.”

Mac tries not to look too much like a dog who just spotted a scrap someone dropped off the table. _Nate,_ he thinks, burning it into his memory. She mentioned a partner before, or something like it; this is the closest he’s ever gotten to anything _real_. The last thing he wants to do is scare her off, if she’s in a talking kinda mood. “Yeah?” he says - all casual-like, just keeping the conversation moving, like he isn’t slavering for every detail like a hound that just smelled fresh radstag. “He must have been the persuasive type.”

Her thin mouth curves into a smile, private smile. “Must’ve been. Dumb bastard even talked me into marrying him.”

If the name was a scrap, this is an entire steak. _Married!_ But- well, it’s less of a surprise than he would’ve thought, now that he knows. Married’s not a big step from partners, not if you’re the possessive type, and fuck knows she’s that. Maybe it would’ve been a shock when they first started gunning together - maybe he’d’ve said something like, _Who the hell would be crazy enough to tie onto a loose cannon like her?_ And later on, after he knew her better, it wouldn’t be the married part that would shock him, but the fact that she was alone when she found him. Maybe, in his heart of hearts, he let himself wonder, once or twice, who’d had a woman like that and let her get away.

But he knows better. Isn’t this the wasteland? So instead he carefully keeps his gaze steady on the fire, and says, “What happened?”

There’s a pause where he thinks she’s not going to answer, and he’s bracing himself against the disappointment - she doesn’t owe him anything, especially nothing something like that - but then:

“Asshole with a gun, same as most everyone else.” There’s the faintest hint of movement out of the corner of his eye, a shadow of a shrug. “We had two, almost three good years, which is more than some get. More than I deserved, probably.” She smiles at him sideways - conspiratorial, a little sad. “He was _way_ too good for the likes of me.”

“Lucy was, too,” he admits - because it’s what you do, on nights like this. You say the kind of stuff you can’t in the cold light of morning. “She knew me when I was a kid, you know? Sometimes I think she never quite realized just what kind of ass- uh, jerk I grew up to be.” He stares broodingly into the fire. “She was smart, pretty, a freaking _doctor…_ She could’ve had anyone, but I guess she wanted me.” He shrugs. “More fool her.”

“A doctor huh? No shit.” Sole’s half-laughing, in that soft, hazy way you only get halfway down a bottle of bourbon. “Nate, too.”

He stares at her. “No. Seriously?”

“Seriously.” She holds up one hand, three fingers raised in some kind of salute. “Scout’s honor. I’d just gotten this-” She points at her forehead scar. “-and my outfit kicked me loose over it, so I was drowning my sorrows in some shithole bar, trying to figure out what I was gonna be if I couldn’t be a soldier anymore, and this _idiot_ picks a fight with a junkie who kept harassing the waitress. And the junkie’s yelling, and my head’s aching and I want him to shut up, so I put a knife to his throat and send him on his way, ‘cause, y’know-”

“-he’s bugging you-”

“-right, and this guy takes one look at my head and goes into doctor mode, all ‘you should be in bed’ and stuff. So busy fussing he never even remembered to say thank you. Figured a man that sweet shouldn’t be allowed out without supervision and volunteered myself for duty.” She smiles faintly down at her toes, remembered affection warm on her rawboned face. “Like I said. I like takin’ care of people.”

“Yeah, I get that,” he says, because what he’s thinking is, _I wanna make her smile like that,_ and he can’t say that out loud - not in a month of Sundays, not if you paid him a million caps. Not even if it’s true.

Especially when it’s true.

And the worst part is, he _does_ get that. Everyone needs a bit of soft in their life, even the boss - hell, maybe _especially_ the boss, as hard as she is. He can’t believe he didn’t see it earlier. Even the best gun in the world needs something else, something that’s not just death. Because after a while, if that’s all you do, you start to think that’s all you _are._ And once you start thinking that… Well, Mac knows how that goes all too well, is all. If it hadn’t been for Lucy - shit, if it hadn’t been for _Duncan_ \- fuck only knows what sort of asshole he’d be. He’s not about lying to himself. He’s not any kind of saint now, but _then-_

“I have a son,” he blurts, before he has a chance to think better of it. “Back in the Capital Wasteland. He’s five.”

A slow blink is the only reaction he gets. He jitters his fingers nervously on his knee then flattens them again. She’s got her thinking face on - the cold, effortlessly still expression that always makes him think about the Man in Black, all _shot a man in Reno just to watch him die_ \- and he finds himself wishing, desperately and not for the first time, that he had any ability to read it at all.

“He’s why I try not to curse,” he fumbles on, unable to bear the silence. “I, uh, I made a promise, you know? To try and be a better man. And Lucy used to hate the cursing, said we weren’t kids anymore and-” He stops. Takes a slow breath. “Anyway. That’s him.”

Sole looks at him for another excruciatingly long moment, her head tilted. When she does speak, her voice is just as neutral as her face, giving nothing away. “What’s his name?”

It’s not what he expected her to say. “Uh, Duncan.”

She nods seriously, like she’s filing away a vital piece of intelligence. “So, what happened?”

She still sounds so weirdly flat that it takes him a moment to realize it’s the exact same thing he asked her, when she told him about her Nate. The (unintentional?) mockery of it puts his back up, and he angrily jerks his head away, glaring into the fire and wishing futilely he still had the bottle. He’s definitely not drunk enough for this conversation - and it’d give him something to do with his hands, besides.

“What do you mean, _what happened?_ I walked away, didn’t I? Not really a lot of explaining to do. I’m here, and he’s there, so-”

She doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t interrupt him, doesn’t try and stop him at all. All she does is reach out. But he still falls silent at the gentle weight of her hand landing on his knee, and when he looks down at it, and then up, following the dark brown path of her sleeve up to her zipper collar and then at last, reluctantly, her face - she’s just looking at him. Not saying anything. Not really looking like anything in particular. Just looking at him.

And as he watches, heart pounding in his ears, her empty expression softens by increments, until she looks just exactly like herself again. His boss, with her fast hands and her stupid jokes, and that deep well of empathy he’s pretty sure she doesn’t even know she has. And whatever expression crosses his face in return, she nods once, and smiles faintly, and withdraws her hand.

“I know you, hotshot.” Her voice is gentle. “Never in a million years would you have left someone behind without a damn good reason, much less your _own kid_. So, what happened?”

“He, uh.” _Get it together, MacCready,_ he sneers at himself. _Don’t make more of an ass of yourself than you already have._ “He got sick. We let this caravan camp out behind our farm for a few days, had a couple kids of their own.”

Duncan was over the fucking moon to play with some kids of his own age for a change; the homestead Mac hired onto was a little off the beaten path, and they didn’t get a lot of visitors. Fuck, if only he’d vetted them more carefully, it was only his fucking _job_ -

“A few days after they moved on, he came down with this fever. Thought it was just a winter bug at first, until the boils started popping up. Big blue ones, all over his body.”

Sole sucks in a breath, but when he glances at her, she just tips up her chin, a silent invitation to continue.

“Anyway. Managed to track down the caravan a few weeks later - what was left of ‘em, anyway. Some other homesteader was a lot smarter than I was, shot anyone showing symptoms. They were still burning bodies when I caught up to them. The discussion got a little, uh, heated-” He had to put his gun to a boy’s head, which he doesn’t feel fucking great about, to say the least. “-but eventually they ‘fessed up that they’d caught it from a merc up here in the Commonwealth. They’d been working escort for some scavvers, one of them went into some building that hadn’t been popped since the war and came down sick two weeks later. He ate a bullet when he realized he might be contagious, but it was too late.”

Saying it out loud brings it all back again: the wet, terrified eyes of the drover, the frantic sobbing breaths of the kid in his hands, not even ten years older than Duncan himself. The sick lurch of helplessness when they finally told him what they knew, like getting caught out in the open right before a radstorm. The drumbeat of thunder in the distance, _toolatetoolatetoolate..._

“We were lucky,” he continues grimly. “One of the homesteaders was a retired doctor, someone who knew how to handle infection. Anyone else woulda just shot him. And after a bit it was clear he wasn’t contagious, so we thought maybe... But he just kept getting sicker. When I left, he was just about too weak to walk.” He shrugs, fidgeting with the ends of his scarf rather that look at her. “So, here I am. Figured maybe if I could hunt down the source, figure out where those scavvers first got sick, I might be able to-”

He cuts himself off and looks down at his boots, face burning with embarrassment. It sounds so _stupid_ when he tries to say it out loud. He never told anybody in the Gunners why he needed money bad enough to join up after years as a freelancer; he knew damn well what they’d say. _Just shoot the kid and put him out of his fucking misery._ And it’s not like they’d be wrong, not by every rule he knows. He’s had to do it before, when a bad fever comes through; once or twice, it’s been someone else’s kid. But not _his._ And he can’t just give up, not where there’s even the faintest chance he might-

“Find the cure,” Sole finishes. Her voice is very soft.

He darts a look at her, dreading to see whatever’s on her face- pity, maybe, like he’s real sweet but real stupid, too, throwing his life away like this. That’s how Daisy looked, when he told her where those caps were going back down at the Capitol. _You’re young, honey, you’re obviously not cooked bad enough to be shooting blanks, you can try again someday._ Like his kid’s fucking _replaceable._ Like he could just make another one and it’d be the same. Fuck _that._ Maybe he’s making a dumb choice, but it’s the only one he knows how to make.

The boss doesn’t look pitying. She looks _proud._

“Good for you, hotshot.” She reaches out and grabs his shoulder, gives it a shake. Her hand feels like a brand, even through the layers of his clothing. Clothing she got for him, one piece at a time. “Fucking _good for you_.”

Her approval hits him like a shot of Med-X, right in the vein: his head spins and warmth rolls out from her grip to fill him, settling hotly in the bottom of his stomach and tingling faintly at the tips of his half-frozen fingers. No one’s look at him like that, not after knowing his fucking stupid plan. Hell, maybe no one’s looked at him like that _ever._ He’s spent so many weeks chasing her approval, even if he refused to admit to himself that’s what he was doing, that to get it so blatantly, for _this-_

“Thanks, Boss.” He swallows hard, and lets himself lean into her grip. “That means a lot, coming from you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I headcanon that whatever weather changes resulted from the nuclear fallout, temps overall went up. My evidence: the game starts at Halloween and you never see snow. In BOSTON. (Yes, I know it's because Bethesda can't code something basic that modders do in their free time. This is the Watsonian explanation. Shush.) So for all of Mac's complaining about the cold, it still doesn't much dip below freezing even in January, and Mac doesn't entirely understand that her "five below" comment was meant to be five below ZERO. Some of Sole's imperviousness to cold is biological, but some of it is just because her frame of reference is an Alaskan winter.
> 
> And yes, before anyone starts yelling at me, I know that New York City is south of Boston, not north. But being one of the major population centers for the entire country, I headcanon that it was bombed approximately into oblivion, and survivors/vaulties built a new city (NEW New York) around Niagra to make use of hydroelectric power, and thus are near the border to Canada. And since it wouldn't do much good to bomb the shit out of Canada, since it was war-torn and annexed, there's not enough radiation to change the weather patterns.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [sorrelchestnut](http://sorrelchestnut.tumblr.com/) on tumblr, come say hi!


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